[Illustration:  084.jpg A Rough Ride]

All the long swift while, without power of thought, I clung to her crest and shoulders, and dug my nails into her creases, and my toes into her flank-part, and was proud of holding on so long, though sure of being beaten.  Then in her fury at feeling me still, she rushed at another device for it, and leaped the wide water-trough sideways across, to and fro, till no breath was left in me.  The hazel-boughs took me too hard in the face, and the tall dog-briers got hold of me, and the ache of my back was like crimping a fish; till I longed to give up, thoroughly beaten, and lie there and die in the cresses.  But there came a shrill whistle from up the home-hill, where the people had hurried to watch us; and the mare stopped as if with a bullet, then set off for home with the speed of a swallow, and going as smoothly and silently.  I never had dreamed of such delicate motion, fluent, and graceful, and ambient, soft as the breeze flitting over the flowers, but swift as the summer lightning.  I sat up again, but my strength was all spent, and no time left to recover it, and though she rose at our gate like a bird, I tumbled off into the mixen.

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CHAPTER XI

TOM DESERVES HIS SUPPER

[Illustration:  086.jpg Illustrated Capital]

“Well done, lad,” Mr. Faggus said good naturedly; for all were now gathered round me, as I rose from the ground, somewhat tottering, and miry, and crest-fallen, but otherwise none the worse (having fallen upon my head, which is of uncommon substance); nevertheless John Fry was laughing, so that I longed to clout his ears for him; “Not at all bad work, my boy; we may teach you to ride by-and-by, I see; I thought not to see you stick on so long—­”

“I should have stuck on much longer, sir, if her sides had not been wet.  She was so slippery—­”

“Boy, thou art right.  She hath given many the slip.  Ha, ha!  Vex not, Jack, that I laugh at thee.  She is like a sweetheart to me, and better, than any of them be.  It would have gone to my heart if thou hadst conquered.  None but I can ride my Winnie mare.”

“Foul shame to thee then, Tom Faggus,” cried mother, coming up suddenly, and speaking so that all were amazed, having never seen her wrathful; “to put my boy, my boy, across her, as if his life were no more than thine!  The only son of his father, an honest man, and a quiet man, not a roystering drunken robber!  A man would have taken thy mad horse and thee, and flung them both into horse-pond—­ay, and what’s more, I’ll have it done now, if a hair of his head is injured.  Oh, my boy, my boy!  What could I do without thee?  Put up the other arm, Johnny.”  All the time mother was scolding so, she was feeling me, and wiping me; while Faggus tried to look greatly ashamed, having sense of the ways of women.