"God forgive me!" Melbury murmured, repenting of what he had done. "He
tried me too sorely; and now perhaps I've murdered him!"
He turned round in the saddle and looked towards the spot on which
Fitzpiers had fallen. To his great surprise he beheld the surgeon rise
to his feet with a bound, as if unhurt, and walk away rapidly under the
trees.
Melbury listened till the rustle of Fitzpiers's footsteps died away.
"It might have been a crime, but for the mercy of Providence in
providing leaves for his fall," he said to himself. And then his mind
reverted to the words of Fitzpiers, and his indignation so mounted
within him that he almost wished the fall had put an end to the young
man there and then.
He had not ridden far when he discerned his own gray mare standing
under some bushes. Leaving Darling for a moment, Melbury went forward
and easily caught the younger animal, now disheartened at its freak.
He then made the pair of them fast to a tree, and turning back,
endeavored to find some trace of Fitzpiers, feeling pitifully that,
after all, he had gone further than he intended with the offender.
But though he threaded the wood hither and thither, his toes ploughing
layer after layer of the little horny scrolls that had once been
leaves, he could not find him. He stood still listening and looking
round. The breeze was oozing through the network of boughs as through
a strainer; the trunks and larger branches stood against the light of
the sky in the forms of writhing men, gigantic candelabra, pikes,
halberds, lances, and whatever besides the fancy chose to make of them.
Giving up the search, Melbury came back to the horses, and walked
slowly homeward, leading one in each hand.
It happened that on this self-same evening a boy had been returning
from Great to Little Hintock about the time of Fitzpiers's and
Melbury's passage home along that route. A horse-collar that had been
left at the harness-mender's to be repaired was required for use at
five o'clock next morning, and in consequence the boy had to fetch it
overnight. He put his head through the collar, and accompanied his
walk by whistling the one tune he knew, as an antidote to fear.
The boy suddenly became aware of a horse trotting rather friskily along
the track behind him, and not knowing whether to expect friend or foe,
prudence suggested that he should cease his whistling and retreat among
the trees till the horse and his rider had gone by; a course to which
he was still more inclined when he found how noiselessly they
approached, and saw that the horse looked pale, and remembered what he
had read about Death in the Revelation. He therefore deposited the
collar by a tree, and hid himself behind it. The horseman came on, and
the youth, whose eyes were as keen as telescopes, to his great relief
recognized the doctor.