the hoofs of his hind feet he began
feeling the ground for his spring. But now Bennett was at his head,
gripping at the bit, striving to thrust him back. Lloyd, half risen from
her seat, each rein wrapped twice around her hands, her long, strong
arms at their fullest reach, held back against the horse with all her
might, her body swaying and jerking with his plunges. But the overhead
check once broken Lloyd might as well have pulled against a locomotive.
Bennett was a powerful man by nature, but his great strength had been
not a little sapped by his recent experiences. Between the instant his
hand caught at the bit and that in which Rox had made his first
ineffectual attempt to spring forward he recognised the inequality of
the contest. He could hold Rox back for a second or two, perhaps three,
then the horse would get away from him. He shot a glance about him. Not
twenty yards away was the canal and the perilously narrow bridge--the
bridge without the guard-rail.

"Quick, Miss Searight!" he shouted. "Jump! We can't hold him. Quick, do
as I tell you, jump!"

But even as he spoke Rox dragged him from his feet, his hoofs trampling
the hollow road till it reverberated like the roll of drums. Bracing
himself against every unevenness of the ground, his teeth set, his face
scarlet, the veins in his neck swelling, suddenly blue-black, Bennett
wrenched at the bit till the horse's mouth went bloody. But all to no
purpose; faster and faster Rox was escaping from his control.

"Jump, I tell you!" he shouted again, looking over his shoulder;
"another second and he's away."

Lloyd dropped the reins and turned to jump. But the lap-robe had slipped
down to the bottom of the cart when she had risen, and was in a tangle
about her feet. The cart was rocking like a ship in a storm. Twice she
tried to free herself, holding to the dashboard with one hand. Then the
cart suddenly lurched forward and she fell to her knees. Rox was off; it
was all over.

Not quite. In one brief second of time--a hideous vision come and gone
between two breaths--Lloyd saw the fearful thing done there in the road,
almost within reach of her hand. She saw the man and horse at grapples,
the yellow reach of road that lay between her and the canal, the canal
itself, and the narrow bridge. Then she saw the short-handled
geologist's hammer gripped in Bennett's fist heave high in the air. Down
it came, swift, resistless, terrible--one blow. The cart tipped forward