"I absolutely adored The Little White Horse ."--J.K. Rowling, creator of the Harry Potter series Winner of the Carnegie Medal When orphaned young Maria Merryweather arrives at Moonacre Manor, she feels as if she's entered Paradise. Her new guardian, her uncle Sir Benjamin, is kind and funny; the Manor itself feels like home right away; and every person and animal she meets is like an old friend. But there is something incredibly sad beneath all of this beauty and comfort--a tragedy that happened years ago, shadowing Moonacre Manor and the town around it--and Maria is determined to learn about it, change it, and give her own life story a happy ending. But what can one solitary girl do? Elizabeth Goudge was born in 1900 in Somerset, England. She is the author of many bestselling books for children and adults, including I Saw Three Ships and Green Dolphin Street. A terrible sound  . . . In mid-gallop Maria was halted by a strange and terrible sound, a thin high screaming that came threading through the happy sounds of the wind and the crying gulls and Periwinkle’s galloping feet, and pushing into her heart like a sharp needle . She pulled in her pony and sat listening, her heart beating fast with sudden fear. Away to her right, beyond a sombre belt of pine-trees, was a deep hollow filled with gorse and blackberry bushes, and from it came the frightening sound. Somewhere down there some child or animal was being hurt. She hesitated for only a moment, and then, gulping down the fear that had come up like a hard lump in her throat, she turned Periwinkle and rode hard for the hollow beyond the pines . . . . “For imaginative readers . . . this tale will have a strong appeal. There are richness of detail and a lovely use of color and light—sunshine, moonlight, and shadows, symbolically contrasted—to catch the fancy, and a spiritual quality in this parable of greed and pride vanquished by innocence and goodwill.” — The New York Times “Fantasy and reality meet on equal terms in an exciting mystery story in which all of the characters, both humans and animals, come alive, and stay alive from start to finish.” — The Horn Book OTHER PUFFIN BOOKS YOU MAY ENJOY Five Children and It     E. Nesbit Linnets and Valerians     Elizabeth Goudge The Lost Flower Children     Janet Taylor Lisle The Secret Garden     Frances Hodgson Burnett Time Cat     Lloyd Alexander The Little White Horse ELIZABETH GOUDGE Dedicated to WALTER HODGES With my thanks THE LITTLE WHITE HORSE IT was under the white moon that I saw him, The little white horse, with neck arched high in pride. Lovely his pride, delicate, no taint of self Staining the unconscious innocence denied Knowledge of good and evil, burden of days Of shame crouched beneath the flail of memory. No past for you, little white horse, no regret, No future of fear in this silver forest — Only the perfect now in the white moon-dappled ride. A flower-like body fashioned all of light, For the speed of light, yet momently at rest, Balanced on the sheer knife-edge of perfection; Perfection of grass silver upon the crest Of the hill, before the scythe falls, snow in sun, Of the shaken human spirit when God speaks In His still small voice and for a breath of time All is hushed; gone in a sigh, that perfection, Leaving the sharp knife-edge turning slowly in the breast. The raised hoof, the proud poised head, the flowing mane, The supreme moment of stillness before the flight, The moment of farewell, of wordless pleading For remembrance of things lost to earthly sight — Then the half-turn under the trees, a motion Fluid as the movement of light on water . . . Stay, oh stay in the forest, little white horse! . . . He is lost and gone and now I do not know If it was a little white horse that I saw, Or only a moonbeam astray in the silver night. Table of Contents CHAPTER ONE 1 THE carriage gave another lurch, and Maria Merryweather, Miss Heliotrope, and Wiggins once more fell into each other’s arms, sighed, gasped, righted themselves, and fixed their attention upon those objects which were for each of them at this trying moment the source of courage and strength. Maria gazed at her boots. Miss Heliotrope restored her spectacles to their proper position, picked up the worn brown volume of French essays from the floor, popped a peppermint into her mouth, and peered once more in the dim light at the wiggly black print on the yellowed page. Wiggins meanwhile pursued with his tongue the taste of the long-since-digested dinner that still lingered among his whiskers. Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people — those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food; and Miss Heliotrope, Maria, and Wiggins were typical representatives of their own sort of people. Maria must be described first, because she is the heroine of this story. In this year of grace 1842 she was thirteen years old and was considered plain, with her q