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Автор Майн Рид
The Best of Thomas Mayne Reid
The Headless Horseman
Prologue
Again is the hoofstroke heard, but with altered intonation. There is a ring of metal – the clinking of steel against stone.
In the clear moonlight of a southern sky, he recognises the most ruthless of his enemies – man. One is approaching upon horseback.
Yielding to instinctive dread, he is about to resume his flight: when something in the appearance of the horseman – some unnatural seeming – holds him transfixed to the spot.
With haunches in quivering contact with the sward, and frontlet faced to the rear, he continues to gaze – his large brown eyes straining upon the intruder in a mingled expression of fear and bewilderment.
What has challenged the stag to such protracted scrutiny?
The horse is perfect in all its parts – a splendid steed, saddled, bridled, and otherwise completely caparisoned. In it there appears nothing amiss – nothing to produce either wonder or alarm. But the man – the rider? Ah! About him there
By heavens! it is the head!
Heedless of the affrighted deer – either of its presence, or precipitate flight – the Headless Horseman rides on.
He, too, is going in the direction of the river. Unlike the stag, he does not seem pressed for time; but advances in a slow, tranquil pace: so silent as to seem ceremonious.
Apparently absorbed in solemn thought, he gives free rein to his steed: permitting the animal, at intervals, to snatch a mouthful of the herbage growing by the way. Nor does he, by voice or gesture, urge it impatiently onward, when the howl-bark of the prairie-wolf causes it to fling its head on high, and stand snorting in its tracks.
He appears to be under the influence of some all-absorbing emotion, from which no common incident can awake him. There is no speech – not a whisper – to betray its nature. The startled stag, his own horse, the wolf, and the midnight moon, are the sole witnesses of his silent abstraction.
