“Keep to the road,” said the postman angrily.  “Why do you run up the edge?  My face is scratched all over by the twigs!  Keep more to the right!”

But at that point there was nearly an accident.  The cart suddenly bounded as though in the throes of a convulsion, began trembling, and, with a creak, lurched heavily first to the right and then to the left, and at a fearful pace dashed along the forest track.  The horses had taken fright at something and bolted.

“Wo! wo!” the driver cried in alarm.  “Wo... you devils!”

The student, violently shaken, bent forward and tried to find something to catch hold of so as to keep his balance and save himself from being thrown out, but the leather mail bags were slippery, and the driver, whose belt the student tried to catch at, was himself tossed up and down and seemed every moment on the point of flying out.  Through the rattle of the wheels and the creaking of the cart they heard the sword fall with a clank on the ground, then a little later something fell with two heavy thuds behind the mail cart.

“Wo!” the driver cried in a piercing voice, bending backwards.  “Stop!”

The student fell on his face and bruised his forehead against the driver’s seat, but was at once tossed back again and knocked his spine violently against the back of the cart.

“I am falling!” was the thought that flashed through his mind, but at that instant the horses dashed out of the forest into the open, turned sharply to the right, and rumbling over a bridge of logs, suddenly stopped dead, and the suddenness of this halt flung the student forward again.

The driver and the student were both breathless.  The postman was not in the cart.  He had been thrown out, together with his sword, the student’s portmanteau, and one of the mail bags.

“Stop, you rascal!  Sto-op!” they heard him shout from the forest.  “You damned blackguard!” he shouted, running up to the cart, and there was a note of pain and fury in his tearful voice.  “You anathema, plague take you!” he roared, dashing up to the driver and shaking his fist at him.

“What a to-do!  Lord have mercy on us!” muttered the driver in a conscience-stricken voice, setting right something in the harness at the horses’ heads.  “It’s all that devil of a tracehorse.  Cursed filly; it is only a week since she has run in harness.  She goes all right, but as soon as we go down hill there is trouble!  She wants a touch or two on the nose, then she wouldn’t play about like this...  Stea-eady!  Damn!”

While the driver was setting the horses to rights and looking for the portmanteau, the mail bag, and the sword on the road, the postman in a plaintive voice shrill with anger ejaculated oaths.  After replacing the luggage the driver for no reason whatever led the horses for a hundred paces, grumbled at the restless tracehorse, and jumped up on the box.

When his fright was over the student felt amused and good-humoured.  It was the first time in his life that he had driven by night in a mail cart, and the shaking he had just been through, the postman’s having been thrown out, and the pain in his own back struck him as interesting adventures.  He lighted a cigarette and said with a laugh: