It was a well-earned correction, deliberately administered, one stinging cut, delivered with a calculation that knew exactly where to strike. But the horse, a young animal, leapt into the air as if he had been shot indeed, and landing again almost on the same spot began forwith to buck-jump in frenzied efforts to free himself of the task-master whose lash was so unerring.
The whip descended again with absolute precision. It looked almost like a feat of jugglery to Maud's fascinated eyes. The horse uttered a furious squeal. He was being forced, literally forced, into the hated water, and he knew it, set himself with all the fiery unreason of youth to resist, and incidentally to receive a punishment none the less painful on account of its extreme deliberation.
As for his rider, he kept his seat without apparent effort. He kept his temper also to all outward appearance. He even in the thick of the struggle abandoned force and tried coaxing again. It was only when this failed that it seemed to the watching girl that a certain quality of implacability began to manifest itself. His movements were no less studied, but they seemed to her to become relentless. From that moment she knew with absolute certainty that there could be but one end to the struggle.
Some dim suspicion of the same thing must have penetrated the animal's intelligence also, for almost from the same moment he seemed to lose heart. He still bucked away from the water and leapt in futile frenzy under the unsparing whip; but his fury was past. He no longer tried to fling his rider over his head. He seemed to be fighting to save his pride rather than for any other reason.
But his pride had to go. Endurance had its limits, and his smooth, clipped flanks were smarting intolerably. Very suddenly he gave in and walked into the water.
It foamed alarmingly round his legs, and he started in genuine terror and tried to turn; but on the instant a hand was on his neck, a square, sustaining hand that patted and consoled.
"Now, don't be a fool horse any longer!" said his conqueror. "Don't you know it's going to do you good? Go on and face it!"
He went on, splashing his rider thoroughly, first in sheer nervousness, later in undisguised content.
He came out of the water some five minutes later, a wiser and considerably less headstrong youngster than he had entered it, and walked serenely along the edge as if he had been accustomed to it all his life. When the spreading foam washed round his hoofs, he did not so much as lay an ear. He had surrendered his pride, and he did not seem to feel the sacrifice.
"A beastly tame ending!" said Bunny in frank disappointment. "I hoped the fellow was going to break his neck."
The horseman was passing immediately below them. He looked up, and Maud coloured a guilty scarlet, realizing that he had overheard the remark. He had the most startlingly bright eyes she had ever seen. They met hers with a directness that seemed to pierce straight through her, and passed on unblinkingly to the boy in the long chair. There was something lynx-like in the straight regard, something so deliberately intent that it seemed formidable. His clean-shaven, weather-beaten face had an untamed, primitive look about it, as of one born in the wilderness. His mouth was rugged rather than coarse, but it was not the mouth of civilization.
Bunny, who was not easily daunted, looked hard back at him, with the brazen expression of one challenging a rebuke. But the horseman refused the challenge, passing on without a word.
"I'm tired," said Bunny, in sudden discontent. "Let's go back!"
When he spoke in that tone, he was invariably beyond coaxing. Maud turned the chair without protest, and prepared to make that exhausting ascent.
"How slow you are to-day!" said Bunny peevishly. "I hate this beastly hill. You make me go up it on my head!"
The slant was certainly acute. Maud murmured sympathy. "I would pull you up if I could," she said.
"You've never even tried," said Bunny.
He was plainly in an exacting mood. Her heart sank a little lower. "It's no use trying, darling," she said. "I know I can't. But I won't take a minute longer over it than I can help."
"You never do anything decently," said Bunny in disgust.
Maud made no rejoinder. She bent in silence to her task.
Bunny could not see her face, and she strove desperately to control her panting breath.
"You puff like a grampus," the boy said discontentedly.
There came the quick fall of a horse's hoofs behind them, and Maud bent her flushed face a little lower. She did not want to meet that piercing regard again. But the hoof-beats slackened behind her, and a voice spoke--a voice so curiously soft that at the first sound she almost believed it to be that of a woman.
"Say! That's too heavy a job for you."
She paused--it was inevitable--and looked round.
In the same moment he slid to the ground--a square, sturdy figure, shorter than she had imagined him when he was in the saddle, horsey of aspect, clumsy of build, possessing a breadth of chest that seemed to indicate vast strength.
Again those extremely bright eyes met hers, red-brown, intensely alive. She felt as if they saw too much; they made her vividly conscious of her hot face and labouring heart. They embarrassed her, made her resentful.
She was too breathless to speak; perhaps she might not have done so in any case. But he did not wait for that. He pushed forward till he stood beside her.
"You take my animal!" he said. "He's quiet enough now."
She might have refused, had she had time to consider. But he gave her none. He almost thrust the bridle into her hands, and the next moment he had taken her place behind the invalid-chair and begun briskly to push it up the hill.
Maud followed, leading the now docile horse, divided between annoyance and gratitude. Bunny seemed struck dumb also, though whether with embarrassment or merely surprise she could not tell.
At the top of the steep ascent the stranger stopped and faced round. "Thanks!" he said briefly, and took his horse back into his own keeping.
Maud stood, feeling shy and awkward, while he set his foot in the stirrup. Then, ere he mounted, with a desperate effort she spoke.
"It was very kind of you. Thank you very much."
Her voice sounded coldly formal by reason of her extreme discomfiture. She would have given a good deal to have avoided speaking altogether. But the man stopped dead and looked at her as though she had attempted to detain him.
"You've nothing to thank me for," he said, in that queer, soft voice of his. "As I said before, it's too heavy a job for you. You'll get a groggy heart if you keep on with it."
There was no intentional familiarity in the speech; but it made her stiffen instinctively.
"It was very kind of you," she repeated, and with a bow that was even more freezingly polite than her words she turned to the chair and prepared to walk on.
But at this point Bunny suddenly found his voice in belated acknowledgment of the service rendered. "Hi! You! Stop a minute! Thanks for pushing me up this beastly hill!"
The stranger was still standing with his foot in the stirrup; but at the sound of Bunny's voice he took it out again and came to the boy's side, leading his horse.
"What a beauty!" said Bunny, admiringly. "Let me touch him, I say!"
"Oh, don't!" Maud said nervously. "He looked so savage just