m. Then a grunting of weary men, and the lifting noise of stirrups,
and sometimes the clank of iron mixed with the wheezy croning of leather
and the blowing of hairy nostrils.

"God's sake, Jack, slip round her belly, and let her go where she wull."

As John Fry whispered, so I did, for he was off Smiler by this time;
but our two pads were too fagged to go far, and began to nose about and
crop, sniffing more than they need have done. I crept to John's side
very softly, with the bridle on my arm.

"Let goo braidle; let goo, lad. Plaise God they take them for
forest-ponies, or they'll zend a bullet through us."

I saw what he meant, and let go the bridle; for now the mist was rolling
off, and we were against the sky-line to the dark cavalcade below us.
John lay on the ground by a barrow of heather, where a little gullet
was, and I crept to him, afraid of the noise I made in dragging my legs
along, and the creak of my cord breeches. John bleated like a sheep to
cover it--a sheep very cold and trembling.

Then just as the foremost horseman passed, scarce twenty yards below us,
a puff of wind came up the glen, and the fog rolled off before it. And
suddenly a strong red light, cast by the cloud-weight downwards, spread
like fingers over the moorland, opened the alleys of darkness, and hung
on the steel of the riders.

"Dunkery Beacon," whispered John, so close into my ear, that I felt his
lips and teeth ashake; "dursn't fire it now except to show the Doones
way home again, since the naight as they went up and throwed the
watchmen atop of it. Why, wutt be 'bout, lad? God's sake--"

For I could keep still no longer, but wriggled away from his arm, and
along the little gullet, still going flat on my breast and thighs, until
I was under a grey patch of stone, with a fringe of dry fern round it;
there I lay, scarce twenty feet above the heads of the riders, and I
feared to draw my breath, though prone to do it with wonder.

For now the beacon was rushing up, in a fiery storm to heaven, and the
form of its flame came and went in the folds, and the heavy sky was
hovering. All around it was hung with red, deep in twisted columns, and
then a giant beard of fire streamed throughout the darkness. The sullen
hills were flanked with light, and the valleys chined with shadow, and
all the sombrous moors between awoke in furrowed anger.

But most of all the flinging fire leaped into the rocky mouth of the
glen below me, where the ho