It was only when Shangois was a third of the way across, that he knew the mare's rider.

There was no time to turn the bridge back, and there was no time for Shangois to stop the headlong pace of the mare.
She gave a wild whinny of fright, and jumped cornerwise, clear out across the chasm, towards the moving bridge.

Her front feet struck the timbers, and then, without a cry, mare and rider dropped headlong down to the river beneath, swollen by the autumn rains.
Baby looked down and saw the mare's head thrust above the water, once, twice; then there was a flash of a sabre--and nothing more.
Shangois, with his dreams of malice and fighting, and the secrets of a half-dozen parishes strapped to his back, had dropped out of Bonaventure, as a stone crumbles from a bank into a stream, and many waters pass over it, and no one inquires whither it has gone, and no one mourns for it..