of word is far worse; it is a crime."

"The Little Ones are in frightful peril, and I brought it upon them!" I
cried. "--But indeed I will not break my word to you. I will return, and
spend in your house what nights--what days--what years you please."

"I tell you once more you will do them other than good if you go
to-night," he insisted.

But a false sense of power, a sense which had no root and was merely
vibrated into me from the strength of the horse, had, alas, rendered me
too stupid to listen to anything he said!

"Would you take from me my last chance of reparation?" I cried. "This
time there shall be no shirking! It is my duty, and I will go--if I
perish for it!"

"Go, then, foolish boy!" he returned, with anger in his croak. "Take the
horse, and ride to failure! May it be to humility!"

He spread his wings and flew. Again I pressed the lean ribs under me.

"After the spotted leopardess!" I whispered in his ear.

He turned his head this way and that, snuffing the air; then started,
and went a few paces in a slow, undecided walk. Suddenly he quickened
his walk; broke into a trot; began to gallop, and in a few moments his
speed was tremendous. He seemed to see in the dark; never stumbled, not
once faltered, not once hesitated. I sat as on the ridge of a wave. I
felt under me the play of each individual muscle: his joints were so
elastic, and his every movement glided so into the next, that not once
did he jar me. His growing swiftness bore him along until he flew rather
than ran. The wind met and passed us like a tornado.

Across the evil hollow we sped like a bolt from an arblast. No monster
lifted its neck; all knew the hoofs that thundered over their heads! We
rushed up the hills, we shot down their farther slopes; from the rocky
chasms of the river-bed he did not swerve; he held on over them his
fierce, terrible gallop. The moon, half-way up the heaven, gazed with
a solemn trouble in her pale countenance. Rejoicing in the power of my
steed and in the pride of my life, I sat like a king and rode.

We were near the middle of the many channels, my horse every other
moment clearing one, sometimes two in his stride, and now and then
gathering himself for a great bounding leap, when the moon reached the
key-stone of her arch. Then came a wonder and a terror: she began to
descend rolling like the nave of Fortune's wheel bowled by the gods, and
went faster and faster. Like our own moon, this one had a human