the
insufferable mastery of man.

He turned with a rush, and one magnificent deer-like bound carried him
over the four-foot gate. Nigel's hat had flown off, and his yellow curls
streamed behind him as he rose and fell in the leap. They were in the
water-meadow now, and the rippling stream twenty feet wide gleamed in
front of them running down to the main current of the Wey. The yellow
horse gathered his haunches under him and flew over like an arrow. He
took off from behind a boulder and cleared a furze-bush on the farther
side. Two stones still mark the leap from hoof-mark to hoof-mark, and
they are eleven good paces apart. Under the hanging branch of the great
oak-tree on the farther side (that Quercus Tilfordiensis ordiensis is
still shown as the bound of the Abby's immediate precincts) the great
horse passed. He had hoped to sweep off his rider, but Nigel sank low
on the heaving back with his face buried in the flying mane. The rough
bough rasped him rudely, but never shook his spirit nor his grip.
Rearing, plunging and struggling, Pommers broke through the sapling
grove and was out on the broad stretch of Hankley Down.

And now came such a ride as still lingers in the gossip of the lowly
country folk and forms the rude jingle of that old Surrey ballad, now
nearly forgotten, save for the refrain:

The Doe that sped on Hinde Head,
The Kestril on the winde,
And Nigel on the Yellow Horse
Can leave the world behinde.

Before them lay a rolling ocean of dark heather, knee-deep, swelling in
billow on billow up to the clear-cut hill before them. Above stretched
one unbroken arch of peaceful blue, with a sun which was sinking down
toward the Hampshire hills. Through the deep heather, down the gullies,
over the watercourses, up the broken slopes, Pommers flew, his great
heart bursting with rage, and every fiber quivering at the indignities
which he had endured.

And still, do what he would, the man clung fast to his heaving sides and
to his flying mane, silent, motionless, inexorable, letting him do what
he would, but fixed as Fate upon his purpose. Over Hankley Down, through
Thursley Marsh, with the reeds up to his mud-splashed withers, onward up
the long slope of the Headland of the Hinds, down by the Nutcombe Gorge,
slipping, blundering, bounding, but never slackening his fearful speed,
on went the great yellow horse. The villagers of Shottermill heard the
wild clat