Close to a farm-house the mare stood still with that extreme suddenness peculiar to her at times, and four black pigs scuttled by and at once became white air.  By now we were both hot and inclined to cling closely together and take liberties with each other; I telling her about her nature, name, and appearance, together with comments on her manners; and she giving forth that sterterous, sweet snuffle, which begins under the star on her forehead.  On such days she did not sneeze, reserving those expressions of her joy for sunny days and the crisp winds.  At a forking of the ways we came suddenly on one grey and three brown ponies, who shied round and flung away in front of us, a vision of pretty heads and haunches tangled in the thin lane, till, conscious that they were beyond their beat, they faced the bank and, one by one, scrambled over to join the other ghosts out on the dim common.

Dipping down now over the road, we passed hounds going home.  Pied, dumb-footed shapes, padding along in that soft-eyed, remote world of theirs, with a tall riding splash of red in front, and a tall splash of riding red behind.  Then through a gate we came on to the moor, amongst whitened furze.  The mist thickened.  A curlew was whistling on its invisible way, far up; and that wistful, wild calling seemed the very voice of the day.  Keeping in view the glint of the road, we galloped; rejoicing, both of us, to be free of the jog jog of the lanes.

And first the voice of the curlew died; then the glint of the road vanished; and we were quite alone.  Even the furze was gone; no shape of anything left, only the black, peaty ground, and the thickening mist.  We might as well have been that lonely bird crossing up there in the blind white nothingness, like a human spirit wandering on the undiscovered moor of its own future.

The mare jumped a pile of stones, which appeared, as it were, after we had passed over; and it came into my mind that, if we happened to strike one of the old quarry pits, we should infallibly be killed.  Somehow, there was pleasure in this thought, that we might, or might not, strike that old quarry pit.  The blood in us being hot, we had pure joy in charging its white, impalpable solidity, which made way, and at once closed in behind us.  There was great fun in this yard-by-yard discovery that we were not yet dead, this flying, shelterless challenge to whatever might lie out there, five yards in front.  We felt supremely above the wish to know that our necks were safe; we were happy, panting in the vapour that beat against our faces from the sheer speed of our galloping.  Suddenly the ground grew lumpy and made up-hill.  The mare slackened pace; we stopped.  Before us, behind, to right and left, white vapour.  No sky, no distance, barely the earth.  No wind in our faces, no wind anywhere.  At first we just got our breath, thought nothing, talked a little.  Then came a chillness, a faint clutching over the