n8 WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



their knees, at a certain spot in the road. They go 

 very well till just on passing the fatal spot a sudden 

 fear seizes them as if they could see something in- 

 visible to men ; sometimes they bolt headlong, some- 

 times stand stock-still and shiver, or throw the rider 

 by a rapid side movement. In the daytime for this 

 supernatural effect is felt in broad day as well as at 

 night the horse more frequently falls or stumbles, 

 as if checked by an invisible force in the midst of his 

 career. This, too, is a living superstition, and some 

 persons will recount a whole string of accidents that 

 have happened within a few yards ; till at last, such 

 is the force of iteration, the most incredulous admit 

 it to be a series of remarkable coincidences. These 

 last two, the black dog and the dangerous place in the 

 road, are believed in by people of a much higher 

 grade than carters. Altogether, the vitality of super- 

 stition in the country is very much greater than is 

 commonly suspected. It is now confined, as it were, 

 to the inner life of the people : no one talks of such 

 things openly, but only to their friends, and thus a 

 stranger might remark on the total extinction of the 

 belief in the supernatural. But much really remains. 



The carters have a story about horses which had 

 spent the night in a meadow being found the next 

 morning in a state of exhaustion, as if they had been 

 ridden furiously during the hours of darkness. They 

 were totally unfit for work next day. Instances are 

 even given where men have hidden in a tree with a 

 gun, and when the horses began to gallop fired at 



