up her lip and scorned it, for now her courage was waking. Then as the
rush of it swept her away, and she struck with her forefeet down the
stream, he leaned from his saddle in a manner which I never could have
thought possible, and caught up old Tom with his left hand, and set him
between his holsters, and smiled at his faint quack of gratitude. In a
moment all these were carried downstream, and the rider lay flat on his
horse, and tossed the hurdle clear from him, and made for the bend of
smooth water.

They landed some thirty or forty yards lower, in the midst of our
kitchen-garden, where the winter-cabbage was; but though Annie and I
crept in through the hedge, and were full of our thanks and admiring
him, he would answer us never a word, until he had spoken in full to the
mare, as if explaining the whole to her.

"Sweetheart, I know thou couldst have leaped it," he said, as he patted
her cheek, being on the ground by this time, and she was nudging up to
him, with the water pattering off her; "but I had good reason, Winnie
dear, for making thee go through it."

She answered him kindly with her soft eyes, and smiled at him very
lovingly, and they understood one another. Then he took from his
waistcoat two peppercorns, and made the old drake swallow them, and
tried him softly upon his legs, where the leading gap in the hedge was.
Old Tom stood up quite bravely, and clapped his wings, and shook off the
wet from his tail-feathers; and then away into the court-yard, and his
family gathered around him, and they all made a noise in their throats,
and stood up, and put their bills together, to thank God for this great
deliverance.