"Yah, massa!" responded a voice from the depths, as Capua floundered
with the remaining horse in the thicket at the lake-edge below. "Yah,
massa,--nuffin harm Ol' Cap in water; spec he born to die in galluses;
had nuff chance to be in glory, ef 'twasn't. I's done beat wid dis yer
pony, anyhow, Mass'r Raleigh. Seems, ef he was a 'sect to fly in de face
of all creation an' pay no 'tention to his centre o' gravity, he might
walk up dis yer hill!"

Mr. Raleigh left Marguerite a moment, to relieve Capua's perplexity.
Through the remaining darkness, the sparkle of stars, and wild fling of
shadows in the wind, she could but dimly discern the struggling figures,
and the great creature trampling and snorting below. She remembered
strange tales out of the "Arabian Nights," "Bellerophon and the
Chimaera," "St. George and the Dragon"; she waited, half-expectant, to
see the great talon-stretched wings flap up against the slow edge of
dawn, where Orion lay, a pallid monster, watching the planet that
flashed like some great gem low in a crystalline west, and she stepped
nearer, with a kind of eager and martial spirit, to do battle in turn.

"Stand aside, Una!" cried Mr. Raleigh, who had worked in a determined
characteristic silence, and the horse's head, sharp ear, and starting
eye were brought to sight, and then his heaving bulk.

"All right, massa!" cried Capua, after a moment's survey, as he patted
the trembling flanks. "Pretty tough ex'cise dat! Spect Massam Clean be
mighty high,--his best cretur done about killed wid dat tree;--feared he
show dis nigger a stick worf two o' dat!"

"We had like to have finished our dance on nothing," said Mr. Raleigh