the great shaggy beard.

Three days passed in this way, and if his time had been much longer
with the wild horses he would have become one of the troop, and
would perhaps have eaten grass too, and forgotten his human speech,
or that he was a little boy born to a very different kind of life.
But it was not to be, and in the end he was separated from the troop
by accident.

At the end of the third day, when the sun was setting, and all the
horses were scattered about in the valley, quietly grazing,
something disturbed them. It might have been a sight or sound of
some feared object, or perhaps the wind had brought the smell of
their enemies and hunters from a great distance to their nostrils.
Suddenly they were all in a wild commotion, galloping from all sides
toward their leader, and he, picking Martin up, was quickly on a
horse, and off they went full speed, but not towards the plain where
they were accustomed to go for their runs. Now they fled in the
opposite direction down to the river: into it they went, into that
wide, deep, dangerous current, leaping from the bank, each horse, as
he fell into the water with a tremendous splash, disappearing from
sight; but in another moment the head and upper part of the neck was
seen to rise above the surface, until the whole lot were in, and
appeared to Martin like a troop of horses' heads swimming without
bodies over the river. He, clinging to the neck and beard of the
wild man, had the upper half of his body out of the cold, rushing
water, and in this way they all got safely across and up the
opposite bank. No sooner were they out, than, without even pausing
to shake the water from their skins, they set off at full speed
across the valley towards the distant hills. Now on this side, at a