H.E. Bates Companion

The long opening tale in The Flying Goat returns to the lead character and themes of the 1929 "Alexander." The tale combines the pure devotion of the boy and horse, detective work, adventure, and loss: "What he [Alexander] did not know until long afterwards was that there, at that moment, in the dead silence of the summer morning, with the sun blazing down on the white pony and the crimson water and the buttercups rich as paint in the grass, some part of his life had gone for ever too." In The Flying Goat (1939), Thirty-One Selected Tales (1947).