With a bold leap--and the Countess shivered as she saw him flying in front of her--he alighted on the back of the off horse, almost on his face, but well across the beast for all that.

Light and wiry, a mere bundle of nerves dressed up, Mr.Barker was not to be shaken off, and, while the animal was still plunging, he had caught the flying bits of bridle, and was sawing away, right and left, with the energy of despair.

Between its terror at being suddenly mounted by some one out of a clear sky, so to say, and the violent wrenching it was getting from Barker's bony little hands, the beast decided to stop at last, and its companion, who was coming in for some of the pulling too, stopped by sympathy, with a series of snorts and plunges.

Barker still clung to the broken rein, leaning far over the horse's neck so as to wind it round his wrist; and he shouted to Margaret to get out, which she immediately did; but, instead of fainting away, she came to the horses' heads and stood before them, a commanding figure that even a dumb animal would not dare to slight--too much excited to speak yet, but ready to face anything.
A few moments later the groom, whose existence they had both forgotten, came running down to them, with a red face, and dusting his battered hat on his arm as he came.

He had quietly slipped off behind, and had been rolled head over heels for his pains, but had suffered no injury.