Here the trees were thick and some of the branches hung low.
[Illustration: THE YOUNG MAJOR STILL LAY WITH HIS EYES CLOSED _The Mystery of Putnam Hall._ (Page 19)] Andy bent down that he might avoid the branches.

But he did not get quite low enough.

He looked ahead, saw a man standing on one side of the roadway staring in astonishment at him, and the next instant he found himself caught by the throat in a tree-limb and carried off the horse.
Then Jim bounded on riderless, and poor Andy, kicking and thrashing wildly, sprang free of the tree-limb and landed on his shoulder in the roadway.
The man who had seen him coming leaped to one side, and just in the nick of time, for the runaway horse passed within a foot of him.

The man gasped in astonishment, and for several seconds did not know apparently what to do.
"Looks like he was killed," the man muttered to himself, as he took a few steps forward.

Andy had rolled over on his back and lay stretched out, with his eyes closed, very much as poor Jack had been stretched out only a short while before.
The man looked up and down the roadway and saw that nobody else was in sight, that part of the highway being but little traveled.