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Slowly the fragments of Ugh-lomi's mind got into order again. The pace
seemed to him terrific, but a kind of exultation was beginning to oust
his first frantic terror. The air rushed by, sweet and wonderful, the
rhythm of the hoofs changed and broke up and returned into itself again.
They were on turf now, a wide glade--the beech-trees a hundred yards
away on either side, and a succulent band of green starred with pink
blossom and shot with silver water here and there, meandered down the
middle. Far off was a glimpse of blue valley--far away. The exultation
grew. It was man's first taste of pace.
Then came a wide space dappled with flying fallow deer scattering this
way and that, and then a couple of jackals, mistaking Ugh-lomi for a
lion, came hurrying after him. And when they saw it was not a lion they
still came on out of curiosity. On galloped the horse, with his one
idea of escape, and after him the jackals, with pricked ears and
quickly-barked remarks. "Which kills which?" said the first jackal.
"It's the horse being killed," said the second. They gave the howl of
following, and the horse answered to it as a horse answers nowadays to
the spur.
On they rushed, a little tornado through the quiet day, putting up
startled birds, sending a dozen unexpected things darting to cover,
raising a myriad of indignant dung-flies, smashing little blossoms,
flowering complacently, back into their parental turf. Trees again, and
then splash, splash across a torrent; then a hare shot out of a tuft of
grass under the very hoofs of the Master Horse, and the jackals left
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