still fighting with his horse;—­but the farmer had turned away.  He thought that Chiltern nodded to him, as much as to tell him to go on.  On he went at any rate.  The brook, when he came to it, seemed to be a huge black hole, yawning beneath him.  The banks were quite steep, and just where he was to take off there was an ugly stump.  It was too late to think of anything.  He stuck his knees against his saddle,—­and in a moment was on the other side.  The brute, who had taken off a yard before the stump, knowing well the danger of striking it with his foot, came down with a grunt, and did, I think, begin to feel the weight of that extra stone.  Phineas, as soon as he was safe, looked back, and there was Lord Chiltern’s horse in the very act of his spring,—­higher up the rivulet, where it was even broader.  At that distance Phineas could see that Lord Chiltern was wild with rage against the beast.  But whether he wished to take the leap or wished to avoid it, there was no choice left to him.  The animal rushed at the brook, and in a moment the horse and horseman were lost to sight.  It was well then that that extra stone should tell, as it enabled Phineas to arrest his horse and to come back to his friend.

The Lincolnshire horse had chested the further bank, and of course had fallen back into the stream.  When Phineas got down he found that Lord Chiltern was wedged in between the horse and the bank, which was better, at any rate, than being under the horse in the water.  “All right, old fellow,” he said, with a smile, when he saw Phineas.  “You go on; it’s too good to lose.”  But he was very pale, and seemed to be quite helpless where he lay.  The horse did not move,—­and never did move again.  He had smashed his shoulder to pieces against a stump on the bank, and was afterwards shot on that very spot.

When Phineas got down he found that there was but little water where the horse lay.  The depth of the stream had been on the side from which they had taken off, and the thick black mud lay within a foot of the surface, close to the bank against which Lord Chiltern was propped.  “That’s the worst one I ever was on,” said Lord Chiltern; “but I think he’s gruelled now.”

“Are you hurt?”

“Well;—­I fancy there is something amiss.  I can’t move my arms; and I catch my breath.  My legs are all right if I could get away from this accursed brute.”

“I told you so,” said the farmer, coming and looking down upon them from the bank.  “I told you so, but you wouldn’t be said.”  Then he too got down, and between them both they extricated Lord Chiltern from his position, and got him on to the bank.

“That un’s a dead un,” said the farmer, pointing to the horse.

“So much the better,” said his lordship.  “Give us a drop of sherry, Finn.”

He had broken his collar-bone and three of his ribs.  They got a farmer’s trap from Wissindine and took him into Oakham.  When there, he insisted on being taken on through Stamford to the Willingford Bull before he would have his bones set,—­picking up, however, a surgeon at Stamford.  Phineas remained with him for a couple of days, losing his run with the Fitzwilliams and a day at the potted peas, and became very fond of his patient as he sat by his bedside.