Page:Post--Dwellers in the hills.djvu/258

242 flickering by the horse-block, a little patch of light. Then the Cardinal's shoe crushed it out.

My coat sleeves cracked like sails. The wind seemed to whistle along my ribs. The horse's shoulders felt like pistons working under a cloth. I was a part of that horse. I fitted my body to him. I adjusted myself to the drive of his legs, to the rise and fall of his shoulders, to the play of every muscle. I rode when his back rocked, like a sort of loose hump fastened on it. His mane blew over my face and went streaming back. My nostrils were filled with the steam from his sweating skin.

Jud rode after the same manner, reducing the area of wind resistance to the smallest space. One watching the horses pass would have seen no rider at all. He might have marked a heavy outline as though something were bound across the saddle or clung flat to it.

You, my masters, who are accustomed to the horse as a slave, cannot know him as a freeman. That docked thing standing by the