Kane stared at Luke unbelievingly as he stalked off to the stables.

‘Well, are you coming or are you going to stare at me like a damned fool idiot?’ Luke stopped and taunted.

‘I’m coming,’ Kane said, getting up and rubbing his hands on his shirt front, ‘but this is a foolhardy adventure, and one of these days you could be sorry for the things you do and say.’

As they rode along Kane looked about uneasily, half expecting to see a spy jump out from behind a boulder or hedge and run home to tell their mother they were disobeying her orders. Luke set his sulky mouth in a tight determined line and prodded his knees in his pony’s sides.

‘We’ll race from here,’ he said in superior tones a short time later, ‘a mile to the new meeting-house building. Agreed, brother?’

‘But it’s dangerous riding fast over the moors,’ Kane protested. ‘It’s safer to wait until we reach the pannier tracks.’

‘There you go again. We’ve ridden this way many times with Jack, we should know every dip and obstacle by now – at least I do.’

‘Oh, very well, but only if you promise to go straight back home afterwards and promise not to try any of those tumbling tricks that circus rider showed us when Mama asked him to perform for us.’

Luke glared at Kane. Their father and Beatrice had filled their heads with the daring, apparently death-defying things he had done as a boy and he’d never once got hurt, at least not badly. If Kane had his way they would never know the thrill of repeating them and making up some new ones of their own before the age of fifty! They’d probably live the lives of two soppy girls!

Making a rude face, he said in a sarcastic sugary-sweet voice, ‘Fine by me. Ready?’

Kane counted to five and they both surged forward. Luke moved quickly ahead, but only because Kane had made up his mind to let him win the ultimate race for the pony. He had no heart left in the challenge, not with the father he loved so far away and with the mother he adored heartbroken. Neither of them would be interested in the outcome of the race and so neither was he.

They rode swiftly over grassy tussocks, expertly skirting round huge boulders in natural but strange formations and solitary ones standing or lying mysteriously alone. Banks of tall ferns bent with the wind of their passage. A slow-worm scuttled away to safety. Insects disturbed by the ponies’ thunder ceased their humming and search for food until they had passed by.