Anne Brontë

“ It was not without a feeling of savage satisfaction that I beheld the instant, deadly pallor that overspread his face, and the few red drops that trickled down his forehead, while he reeled a moment in his saddle, and then fell backward to the ground. The pony, surprised to be so strangely relieved of its burden, started and capered, and kicked a little, and then made use of its freedom to go and crop the grass of the hedge-bank: while its master lay as still and silent as a corpse. ”

“ Lawrence would probably reveal the whole truth, and thereby bring me to tenfold disgrace - unless I were villain enough, presuming on the absence of witnesses, to persist in my own version of the case, and make him out a still greater scoundrel than he was. No; he had only received a cut above the temple, and perhaps a few bruises from the fall, or the hoofs of his own pony: that could not kill him if he lay there half the day; and, if he could not help himself, surely some one would be coming by: it would be impossible that a whole day should pass and no one traverse the road but ourselves. ”

“ But no, thank heaven, both man and horse were gone, and nothing was left to witness against me but two objects - unpleasant enough in themselves to be sure, and presenting a very ugly, not to say murderous appearance - in one place, the hat saturated with rain and coated with mud, indented and broken above the brim by that villainous whip-handle; in another, the crimson handkerchief, soaking in a deeply tinctured pool of water - for much rain had fallen in the interim.
Bad news flies fast: it was hardly four o'clock when I got home, but my mother gravely accosted me with - 'Oh, Gilbert! ”