Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/128

 horse that carried him clinging to it. And he ran up the road, instead of down. And the storm hooted and whipped him. But over all his panic and the incredible swiftness of the motion that bore him along, his mind seemed to ride coolly alert and exultant and at the same time mad.

He fell and struck his forehead against something immovable from which his head seemed to rebound with a swimming lightness that was exhilarating; his amazing body lifted him again unhurt, and sprang ahead with him. It carried him without effort, and fell and rose under him, dipping and soaring like a bird. Once the lightning showed a fallen tree-trunk in his way, and he leaped with the flash, and cleared it, and sailed along unwearied. He felt that he would never tire, and when he began to sink in on himself, it was as if his body were a punctured balloon that had begun to flatten but not to collapse.

His feet seemed to be dragging. He feared that they might catch against