d gave a little wistful neigh:
and then looked me full in the face again, as much as to say, 'Do you
understand?' while she scraped with one hoof impatiently. If ever a
horse tried hard to speak, it was Winnie at that moment. I went to her
side and patted her; but that was not what she wanted. Then I offered to
leap into the empty saddle; but neither did that seem good to her: for
she ran away toward the part of the field at which she had been glancing
back, and then turned round, and shook her mane, entreating me to follow
her.

Upon this I learned from the dying man where to find his apple-tree, and
promised to add another guinea to the one in store for his children; and
so, commending him to God, I mounted my own horse again, and to Winnie's
great delight, professed myself at her service. With her ringing silvery
neigh, such as no other horse of all I ever knew could equal, she at
once proclaimed her triumph, and told her master (or meant to tell, if
death should not have closed his ears) that she was coming to his aid,
and bringing one who might be trusted, of the higher race that kill.

A cannon-bullet (fired low, and ploughing the marsh slowly) met poor
Winnie front to front; and she, being as quick as thought, lowered her
nose to sniff at it. It might be a message from her master; for it made
a mournful noise. But luckily for Winnie's life, a rise of wet ground
took the ball, even under her very nose; and there it cut a splashy
groove, missing her off hindfoot by an inch, and scattering black mud
over her. It frightened me much more than Winnie; of that I am quite
certain: because though I am firm enough, when it comes to a real
tussle, and the heart of a fellow warms up and tells him that he must go
through with it; yet I never did approve of making a cold pie of death.

Therefore, with those reckless cannons, brazen-mouthed, and bellowing,
two furlongs off, or it might be more (and the more the merrier), I
would have given that year's hay-crop for a bit of a hill, or a thicket
of oaks, or almost even a badger's earth. People will call me a coward
for this (especially when I had made up my mind, that life was not worth
having without any sign of Lorna); nevertheless, I cannot help it: those
were my feelings; and I set them down, because they made a mark on me.
At Glen Doone I had fought, even against cannon, with some spirit and
fury: but now I saw nothing to fight about; but rather in every poor
doubled corps