ing, forcing himself
near enough to speak.

"I will, unless he kills me," she answered, "and that methinks he will
find it hard to do."

"He will kill you," he said. "I would, were I in his four shoes."

"You would if you could," were her words; "but you could not with his bit
in your mouth and my hand on the snaffle. And if he killed me, still
'twould be he, not I, was beaten; since he could only kill what any
bloody villain could with any knife. He is a brute beast, and I am that
which was given dominion over such. Look on till I have done with him."

And thus, with other beholders, though in a different mood from theirs,
he did, until a day when even the most sceptical saw that the brute came
to the fray with less of courage, as if there had at last come into his
brain the dawning of a fear of that which rid him, and all his madness
could not displace from its throne upon his back.

"By God!" cried more than one of the bystanders, seeing this, despite the
animal's fury, "the beast gives way! He gives way! She has him!" And
John Oxon, shutting his teeth, cut short an oath and turned pale as
death.

From that moment her victory was a thing assured. The duel of strength
became less desperate, and having once begun to learn his lesson, the
brute was made to learn it well. His bearing was a thing superb to
behold; once taught obedience, there would scarce be a horse like him in
the whole of England. And day by day this he learned from her, and being
mastered, was put through his paces, and led to answer to the rein, so
that he trotted, cantered, galloped, and leaped as a bird flies. Then as
the town had come to see him fight for freedom, it came to see him adorn
the victory of the being who had conquered him, and over their dishes of
tea in the afternoon beaux and beauties of fashion gossiped of the
interesting and exciting event; and there were vapourish ladies who vowed
they could not have beaten a brute so, and that surely my Lady
Dunstanwolde must have looked hot and blowzy while she did it, and have
had the air of a great rough man; and there were some pretty tiffs and
even quarrels when the men swore that never had she looked so magnificent
a beauty and so inflamed the hearts of all beholding her.

On the first day after her ladyship's last battle with her horse, the one
which ended in such victory to her that she rode him home hard through
the streets without an outbreak, he white with lather, and