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