trees I saw a brown holland habit getting upon a horse.

It must have been my state of over-excitement that made me so quick
to meddle with what did not concern me. Saumarez was moving off to
the habit; but I pushed him back and said:--"Stop here and explain.
I'll fetch her back!" and I ran out to get at my own horse. I had
a perfectly unnecessary notion that everything must be done
decently and in order, and that Saumarez's first care was to wipe
the happy look out of Maud Copleigh's face. All the time I was
linking up the curb-chain I wondered how he would do it.

I cantered after Edith Copleigh, thinking to bring her back slowly
on some pretence or another. But she galloped away as soon as she
saw me, and I was forced to ride after her in earnest. She called
back over her shoulder--"Go away! I'm going home. Oh, go away!"
two or three times; but my business was to catch her first, and
argue later. The ride just fitted in with the rest of the evil
dream. The ground was very bad, and now and again we rushed
through the whirling, choking "dust-devils" in the skirts of the
flying storm. There was a burning hot wind blowing that brought up
a stench of stale brick-kilns with it; and through the half light
and through the dust-devils, across that desolate plain, flickered
the brown holland habit on the gray horse. She headed for the
Station at first. Then she wheeled round and set off for the river
through beds of burnt down jungle-grass, bad even to ride a pig
over. In cold blood I should never have dreamed of going over such
a country at night, but it seemed quite right and natural with the
lightning crackling overhead, and a reek like the smell of the Pit
in my nostrils. I rode and shouted, and she bent forward and
lashed her horse, and the aftermath of the dust-storm came up and