Sir John celebrated his knighthood at the inn and was in no state to drive the beehives to market before dawn. So Tess took the cart herself, with her little brother asleep against the hives. She fell into a reverie, and then into sleep, and the old horse Prince wandered to the wrong side of the road. The morning mail-cart struck him, and its pointed shaft entered his breast like a sword. Tess tried to stop the wound with her hand, and she was splashed from face to skirt with crimson drops. Prince was the family's whole living. Tess regarded herself as a murderess. When her mother proposed that she should go to a rich Mrs d'Urberville near Trantridge and claim kin, Tess could not refuse. She went because she had killed the horse.