He made little spurts at full speed, leaped into the air, and came down stiff-legged at the end of the run, his head between his braced forefeet, and then he whirled as if on a peg and darted back the other way.

The thing sprang upon him out of vagueness into the utmost clearness, the sharp, eager, round-eared face, the long body exaggerated by its movement; and what particularly struck him, the pink, webbed forefeet of the beast.

The gallop of a horse is distinctly audiblein other times one would never have noticed such a thing; it is an express with despatches, a Garibaldian, or one of the Vengeurs de Flourens, who is hoisted on a heavy cart-horse that ploughs the earth with its ponderous forefeet.