The Courtship of Morrice Buckler by A.E.W. Mason

AT length, then, I was fairly started on my way to Bristol. For my direction over this first stage of my journey I had made inquiries of Elmscott, and I rode westward towards the village of Knightsbridge, thanking Providence most heartily for that the city still slept. For what with my disordered dress, my oak cudgel, and the weedy screw which I bestrode--I scruple to dignify her with the name of mare, for I have owned mares since which I loved, and would not willingly affront them--I could not hope to pass unnoticed were any one abroad, and, indeed, should esteem myself well-used to be counted no worse than a mountebank. Thus I crossed Hounslow Heath and reached Brentford without misadventure. There I joyfully parted with my Rosinante, and hiring a horse, rode post. The way, however, was ill-suited for speedy travelling, and my hope of seeing Julian that night dwindled with my shadow as the sun rose higher and higher behind my shoulders. Ruts deep and broad as new furrows trenched the road, and here and there some slough would make a wide miry gap, wherein my horse sank over the fetlocks. Some blame, moreover, must attach to me, for I chose a false turn at the hamlet of Colnbrook, and journeyed ten miles clean from my path to Datchet; so that in the end night found me blundering on the edge of Wickham Heath, some sixty-one miles from London. I had changed horses at Newbury, and I determined to press on at least so far as Hungerford. But I had not counted with myself.

I was indeed overwrought with want of sleep, and the last few stages I had ridden with dulled senses in a lethargy of fatigue. At what point exactly I wandered from the road I could not tell. But the darkness had closed in before I began to notice a welcome ease and restfulness in the motion of the gallop. I was wondering idly at the change, when of a sudden my horse pops his foot into a hole. The reins were hanging loose on his neck; I myself was rocking in the saddle, so that I shot clean over his shoulder, turned a somersault in mid-air, and came down flat on my back in the centre of the Heath. For a while I lay there without an effort or desire to move. I felt as if Mother Earth had taken pity on my weariness, and had thus unceremoniously put me to bed. The trample of hoofs, however, somewhat too close to my legs roused me to wakefulness, and I started up and prepared to remount. To my dismay I found that my horse was badly lamed; he could barely set his foreleg to the ground.