Over
hill and dale, over rough ground and smooth, splashing through marshy
soil where the hoofs of the heavily laden horse sucked juicily, through
burns, and across sodden peaty moor where the smell of swamp rose rank
on the night air, they floundered; and once the homely smell of peat
reek told the unhappy judge that they passed within hail of some human
dwelling. But throughout the night he saw nothing, and gradually the
long strain, the discomfort of being pitched forward or back as the
horse scrambled up or down where the ground was extra rough and broken,
the pain of sitting half in, half out, of a saddle, told upon a frame
unaccustomed to much exercise, and at intervals he wholly or partially
lost consciousness. Thus unutterably distressed in body and broken in
spirit, in one of these partial lapses it seemed to the judge--as it
might be in some disordered nightmare--that there came a respite from
the torment of ceaseless motion, and that by means of some unknown
agency he lay in heavenly peace, stretched full length on a couch or
bed. He thought--or did he dream?--that he had heard, as it were far
off, the muffled trairip of feet and the murmur of low voices; and it
seemed almost as if his body, after falling from some vast height, had
been lifted and gently swung in the air.
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