Robert Louis Stevenson
Published: 2020-11-18
Total Pages: 180
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It was near six in the May morning when Dick began to ride down into the fen upon hishomeward way. The sky was all blue; the jolly wind blew loud and steady; the windmillsails were spinning; and the willows over all the fen rippling and whitening like a field ofcorn. He had been all night in the saddle, but his heart was good and his body sound, andhe rode right merrily.The path went down and down into the marsh, till he lost sight of all the neighbouringlandmarks but Kettley windmill on the knoll behind him, and the extreme top of TunstallForest far before. On either hand there were great fields of blowing reeds and willows, pools of water shaking in the wind, and treacherous bogs, as green as emerald, to temptand to betray the traveller. The path lay almost straight through the morass. It wasalready very ancient; its foundation had been laid by Roman soldiery; in the lapse of agesmuch of it had sunk, and every here and there, for a few hundred yards, it lay submergedbelow the stagnant waters of the fen.About a mile from Kettley, Dick came to one such break in the plain line of causeway, wherethe reeds and willows grew dispersedly like little islands and confused the eye. The gap, besides, was more than usually long; it was a place where any stranger might come readilyto mischief; and Dick bethought him, with something like a pang, of the lad whom he had soimperfectly directed. As for himself, one look backward to where the windmill sails wereturning black against the blue of heaven-one look forward to the high ground of TunstallForest, and he was sufficiently directed and held straight on, the water washing to hishorse's knees, as safe as on a highway.Half-way across, and when he had already sighted the path rising high and dry upon thefarther side, he was aware of a great splashing on his right, and saw a grey horse, sunk toits belly in the mud, and still spasmodically struggling. Instantly, as though it had divinedthe neighbourhood of help, the poor beast began to neigh most piercingly. It rolled, meanwhile, a blood-shot eye, insane with terror; and as it sprawled wallowing in the quag, clouds of stinging insects rose and buzzed about it in the air."Alack!" thought Dick, "can the poor lad have perished? There is his horse, for certain-abrave grey! Nay, comrade, if thou criest to me so piteously, I will do all man can to helpthee. Shalt not lie there to drown by inch