The street they took for their run crossed a small arm of the Manokin,
and led up to a gentleman's gate; but before this brook was crossed
Tilghman, an experienced horseman and driver, had reined the flying
animals into a nearly unoccupied street, called Back Alley, parallel
with the main street of Princess Anne, but hidden from it by houses and
gardens, and almost in a moment of time the whole town had been cleared,
with hardly a person in it aware of such a vehicle going past.
It was a real runaway, but Tilghman, in a cool, gentle voice, like a
brook's music, told the girls to sit perfectly still, as they had a
clear, level road; and, seeing that he could not stop the animals by any
mere exercise of strength, without danger to his harness, he waited for
their power to wear out, or their fears to subside.
Rhoda Holland was ashamed to scream, if her pride was not too well
aroused already in the presence of the muscular young minister, sitting
there like an artillery teamster driving into battle, and his nostrils
and jaws delineated in the gray air, expressed almost the joy he had
long put by of following the hounds in the autumn fox-hunts, where Judge
Custis said he had been the perfect pattern of a rider.
As for Virgie, she felt no fear of wild horses, since they were leaving
behind the bloody hunters of men and women, and she almost wished it was
herself alone, dashing at that frightful pace to destruction, until the
young man, mindful, perhaps, of his mistress, torn from his sight to
inhabit another's arms, and feeling that this poor quadroon was dear as
a sister to Vesta's heart, bent down in the midst of his apprehensions
and kissed the slave girl pityingly.
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