He never swerved from his tracks except once, when he turned out carefully for a bad place in the road, where the ground seemed to be caving in, which Abel Edwards had always avoided with a loaded team.

There was something awful about this old animal, with patient and laborious stupidity in every line of his plodding body, obeying still that higher intelligence which was no longer visible at his guiding-reins, and perhaps had gone out of sight forever.

It had all the uncanny horror of a headless spectre advancing down the road.
Jerome collected himself when the white horse came alongside.

"Whoa! Whoa, Peter!" he gasped out.

The horse stopped and stood still, his great forefeet flung stiffly forward, his head and ears and neck hanging as inertly as a broken tree-bough with all its leaves drooping.
The boy stumbled weakly to the side of the wagon and stretched himself up on tiptoe.