title: Circle Around Monadnock: Time Travel with Horses
author: Francelia Clark
description: Francelia Clark grew up in Washington, DC, but yearned for her familys annual summer vacations in southwestern New Hampshire, full of the outdoors, fascinating old places, and adventures. After a long career teaching writing, Beowulf, and comparative epic literature at University of Michigan, she retired to Hancock, New Hampshire, where she celebrates the gifts of the outdoors, the old places, art, writing, and animals, especially the trail pony with whom she shared the adventure that inspired this book.
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  >
  
  
  > CHAPTER 1
  
  
   England 1817 – Kent
  
  
  
   Sarah shifted in the saddle, the weight of her saturated clothes heavy on her
  shoulders and hindering her seat. The horse’s pounding hooves, as loud as a
  drum, echoed in her ears. She kicked her mount and urged him over a small
  hedgerow, her determination not to be caught overriding her common sense.
  
  
  
   Rain streamed down her face, but she couldn’t stop. The future of TimeArch
  depended on it. Her father’s years of research. The hundreds of hours spent
  working on man’s greatest, most sought-after ability. Sarah slowed her mount
  to canter through a fast moving ford, the stones causing the horse to stumble,
  making the short trip across painfully slow. Time was up. She had to get away.
  Though the horse grappled and slipped up the other side of the muddy bank to
  continue on, apprehension still threatened to close her throat in panic.
  
  
  
   The mount missed a step, and Sarah clutched the saddle, cursing