About half a mile from Highmost Redmanhey, round the shoulder of Clinton hill, there is a disused and flooded quarry.  Where the sides are not cliffs, wooded slopes drop steeply.  A broken wind pump creaks, and a forgotten path runs nowhere into the brambles.  In sunlight it is a forlorn place, forlorn as nothing but deserted machinery can be; but when the sun goes in, the air is charged with a different feeling.  The water is sombre under its brows of cliff, and the trees crowd down to drink, the pump sneers; lonely, green-hued, dark.

But peaceful, thought Susan, and that's something.

There had been no peace at the farm since their return.  Two days of talk from Colin, and the silences made heavy by the Mossocks' uneasiness.  For Bess and Gowther knew of the children's past involvement with magic, and they were as troubled by this mixing of the two worlds as Cadellin had been.

The weather did not help.  The air was still, moist, too warm for the beginning of winter.
Susan had felt that she must go away to relax; so that afternoon she had left Colin and had come to the quarry.  She stood on the edge of a slab of rock that stretched into the water, and lost herself in the grey shadows of fish.  She was there a long time, slowly unwinding the tensions of the days: and then a noise made her look up.

"Hallo.  Who are you?"

A small black pony was standing at the edge of the water on the other side of the quarry.

"What are you doing here?"

The pony tossed its mane, and snorted.

"Come on, then!  Here, boy!"

The pony looked hard at Susan, flicked its tail, then turned and disappeared among the trees.

"Oh, well - I wonder what the time is."  Susan climbed up the slope out of the quarry and into the field.  She walked round to the wood on the far side, and whistled, but nothing happened.  "Here, boy!  Here, boy!  Oh don't, then; I'm - oh!"

The pony was standing right behind her.

"You made me jump!  Where've you been?"

Susan fondled the pony's ears.  It seemed to like that, for it thrust its head into her shoulder, and closed its velvet-black eyes.

"Steady!  You'll knock me over."

For several minutes she stroked its neck, then reluctantly she pushed it away.  "I must go now.  I'll come and see you to-morrow."  The pony trotted after her.  "No, go back.  You can't come."  But the pony followed Susan all the way across the field, butting her gently with its head and nibbling at her ears.  And when she came to climb through the fence into the next field, it put itself between her and the fence, and pushed sideways with its sleek belly.

"What do you want?"

Push.

"I've nothing for you."

Push.

"What is it?"

Push.

"Do you want me to ride?  That's it, isn't it?  Stand still, then.  There.  Good boy.  You have got a long, back, haven't you?  There.  Now - woa!  Steady!"

The moment Susan was astride, the pony wheeled round and set off at full gallop towards the quarry.  Susan grabbed the mane with both hands.