The mist seemed to have fingers now, long, dark
white, crawling fingers; it seemed, too, to have in its sheer silence a
sort of muttered menace, a shuddery lurkingness, as if from out of it
that spirit of the unknown, which in hot blood we had just now so
gleefully mocked, were creeping up at us, intent on its vengeance. Since
the ground no longer sloped, we could not go down-hill; there were no
means left of telling in what direction we were moving, and we stopped to
listen. There was no sound, not one tiny noise of water, wind in trees,
or man; not even of birds or the moor ponies. And the mist darkened. The
mare reached her head down and walked on, smelling at the heather; every
time she sniffed, one's heart quivered, hoping she had found the way.
She threw up her head, snorted, and stood still; and there passed just in
front of us a pony and her foal, shapes of scampering dusk, whisked like
blurred shadows across a sheet. Hoof-silent in the long heather--as ever
were visiting ghosts--they were gone in a flash. The mare plunged
forward, following. But, in the feel of her gallop, and the feel of my
heart, there was no more that ecstasy of facing the unknown; there was
only the cold, hasty dread of loneliness. Far asunder as the poles were
those two sensations, evoked by this same motion. The mare swerved
violently and stopped. There, passing within three yards, from the same
direction as before, the soundless shapes of the pony and her foal flew
by again, more intangible, less dusky now against the darker screen.
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