Before him Bobs was galloping
freely, Norah riding with her hands well down, and on her face a smile
that was like a child's laugh of sheer happiness. Norah loved
thunderstorms; they seemed to call to something in her nature that
never failed to respond. She glanced up at Jim merrily as he passed
her.
"Grand, isn't it?" she said. Then her face changed. "He isn't getting
away with you, Jim?"
"Not he!" said her brother, grinning. "But we've got to get out of this
jolly soon--hurry your old crock, Norah!" Norah's indignant heel smote
Bobs, and they raced neck and neck for a moment.
They swung out of the trees just in time, the plain clear for home
before them. Almost simultaneously, the storm broke. There was a mad
flash of lightning across the gloom, and then a rattling peal of
thunder that rang round the sky and finished with a tremendous crack
overhead. The black horse stopped suddenly, wild with terror. Then his
head went down, and he bucked.
Norah and Wally pulled up, regardless of the rain beginning to fall in
torrents. Monarch was swaying to and fro in mad paroxysms, trying to
get his head between his knees, his back humped in an arch, all his
being centred in the effort to get rid of the weight on his back, and
the iron in his mouth, and the control that kept him near that terrible
convulsion of nature going on overhead.
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