There was the usual scurry.  Boy Woodburn was, as always, the last away, with Silver in close attendance.

They threaded the ragged fringes of pedestrians, who still clung to the skirts of the horsemen, turned to the right through an open gate, and leisurely pursued the cavalcade disappearing furiously before them in the distance.

The girl nursed her baby, who showed himself as unconcerned by the fuss and flurry of the vanguard as his young mistress; while Banjo fretted and fumed to get away.

They crossed a big grass field at a canter.  Lollypop was young and raw as a calf, and Jim Silver rode well behind, giving him and his rider plenty of room.

Before them was a low stake-and-bound with a drop on the far side.  Lollypop flopped along toward it like a boat in a swell, flapping his long ears, bridling, and pondering whether he would have it or not.  On the whole, he thought he would.  To lift over it would probably mean less trouble in the end than to fight the quiet and resolute creature who cooed so softly in his ears, and rode him with such iron resolution.  Moreover, he knew now as the result of experience that if it came to a struggle he would be worsted in the end if it took all day.  It would certainly be less irksome, and more gracious, to get the thing behind you.  To jump, and to pretend you liked it, was the generous and the politic thing to do.  Moreover, it was all in the direction of home and bran-mash; while there was Banjo golly-woshing through the mud close behind him.  And Lollypop not only had to live up to his reputation and set his elder an example, which he loved to do, but he also wished to show the gray what he could do himself when he tried.

The young horse had just made up his mind in the right way, cocked his ears, gathered himself, and passed the thrill to his responsive and expectant mistress, when a huge and black bird, vaster and far more hideous than anything the young horse had ever seen upon the Downs, rose suddenly underneath his nose on the far side of the hedge, flapped its wings obscenely, spread them wide, and then twirled round insanely at astonishing speed.

* * * * *

Joses, nursing his wounds, sat on in the parlour of The Beehive long after the cavalcade had moved off, and comforted himself in the usual way.

When at length he rose with a drained tankard and paid his shot at the counter, he gave his views on society to the landlord in such coloured terms as genuinely to shock that worthy, who had been brought up respectably in the shadow of a Duke.

“They’re patriots and imperialists, they are,” said the fat man.  “Never think of themselves.  They hunt the fox, and shoot the pheasant, and keep you and me under, not because they enjoy it and want all the fun to themselves.  Oh, no!—­don’t make that mistake.  But because it’s their bounden duty to God and man so to do!”