Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/71

63 drooped and slackened; these were what suited the passionate need of liberty, the zest to do and dare, the eagle-love of solitude ingrained in his Border-blood, and as latent in him as in the chieftains of his name when they had borne fire and sword far away into stout Northumberland, or harried the Marches in their King's defiance.

The pressure of his knees sufficing for her guidance without curb or spur, the sorrel scoured the winding ravine, fleet and sure of foot, as though the rocky and irregular ground had been a level stretch of sward, her ears pointed, her pace like the wind, all the blood and mettle there were in her roused; she knew her master in her rider. Dashing onward through the gloom thus, suddenly his hand checked her; his eyes had seen what hers had not. Thrown back on her haunches in the midst of her breathless gallop, she reared in snorting terror; any other she might have hurled senseless to the earth; he sat as motionless as though horse and man were cast together in bronze.

Across the narrow and precipitous path lay the felled trunk of a pine, blocking the way. She rose erect, and stood so for a second, her rider in his saddle firm as on a rock—a sculptor would have given ten years of his life to have caught and fixed