THE SILVER FOX 177 



She could at first only make out that it was 

 lame, she iieared and saw a saddle and 

 dangling reins. The stillness of the hillside 

 seemed to tell her the rest. She came up 

 to the grey horse and took him by the 

 head; he was dead lame and trembling all 

 over, there was mud on his jaw, on his 

 shoulder, on the saddle. She had seen 

 before what horses looked like after a bad 

 fall. She led him down the field in the 

 direction from which he had come, and saw, 

 aw^ay by the fence, a motionless spot of 

 scarlet and white. 



In a few moments she was on her knees 

 beside her husband. His face was buried 

 in a heather tussock, his hands were clinched 

 in the black and boggy soil ; as she tried to 

 turn him over the blood trickled heavily 

 from the corner of his mouth. A little 

 gurgling sound in his throat told her that 

 he was alive, but he was far away in that 

 trance of physical defeat in which soul and 

 body seem alike absorbed. 



She was wholly unversed in illness, un- 



