Larry returned to Christian's side.

"I hate not seeing Cousin d.i.c.k out," he began; "what a pity he gave 'em up! Why did he? You know, Christian, you were pretty rotten about writing to me! Aunt Freddy never tells me a thing about the Hunt! I didn't even know Cousin d.i.c.k had chucked till I saw it in _The Field_."

Larry was staring at Christian as he spoke. He, like her was searching for his former comrade; but, unlike her, was doing so unconsciously, as Larry did most things: What he believed himself to be doing was appraising her appearance from a painter's point of view. He found he had forgotten her eyes. He tried to think of them in terms of paint; _Brun de Bruxelles_, and a touch of cadmium, or was it _Verte emeraude_? Hang it! How can paint do more than suggest the colours of a sunlit moorland pool? Was it the white hunting-tie that gave that special "value" to her face He had forgotten how delicious in tone was the faint colour that just tinted her cheek; so hopeless a word as pink was not to be thought of; just a hint of _Rose Garance dore_, might do it. And to get the drawing of those subtle outlines the ineffable refinement of all her features. Larry put his head on one side, and screwed up his eyes (remembering faithfully the injunctions of "dear old Chose," _en clignant bien les yeux_) and said to himself that she would put dear old Chose himself to his trumps, and then maybe he wouldn't get her right!

Aloud he said, peremptorily and professionally:

"Christian, I'm going to paint you! Eight o'clock at the studio to-morrow morning, _Ma'mselle, s'il vous plait_!"

Christian's response was closured by a wild outcry from the wood, hounds and horn lifting up their voices together in sudden delirium.

Old horses p.r.i.c.ked their ears, and young ones, and notably, Nancy, began to fret and to fidget. Some one said, unnecessarily: "That's him!" A man, farther down the road, turned his horse, and standing in his stirrups, stared over the wall into the thick covert, rigid as a dog setting his game. Then he held up his hat, and, a moment later, something brown glided, with the fluent swiftness of a fish in a stream, across the road and over the opposite wall. The scream that followed him was not needed; was, indeed, hardly heard in the crashing, clashing clamour of the back, as they came pitching headlong over the wall of the wood, and hurling themselves at the opposite wall. It was high, and had a coped, top, and the yelling hounds broke against it, and fell, like waves against a cliff. A couple achieved it, and the anguish of their comrades, as they heard them go away, full-cry, on the line, redoubled. In the same instant, Larry was off his tall bay. He flung his reins to Christian, and was into the struggling pack. It is no easy matter to heave a hound over a high wall, but Larry and a young farmer had somehow shoved over four couple, before Bill Kirby and his whipper-in came and swept the remainder to a place of possible entrance a little further on.

Larry s.n.a.t.c.hed his plunging horse from Christian, and started to gallop before he was fairly in the saddle, kicking his right foot into the stirrup as he went, and shouting grat.i.tude to Christian for having held the horse. It had not been easy. Nancy had proved the accuracy of her groom's statement by again "going up as straight as a ribbon" when the hounds crossed the road, and the bay had not been backward in emulating her efforts. Bill Kirby had had luck; the fox had run left-handed under the wall, and the leading hounds met the Master, with the body of the pack, at the verge of the wood on its farther side. A bank, pitted with rabbit-holes, a s.p.a.ce of stony lane with a pole at its farther end, and Nad Wood was a thing of the past.

Outside, a fair stretch of gra.s.s presented itself, falling in mild gradients to the banks of the Broadwater, sprinkled with cattle, dotted with groups of trees cl.u.s.tering round white farm houses, from whose chimneys the thin, blue lines of the smoke of morning fires were just beginning to ascend.

But few are able to spare much thought for others during a first burst out of covert, their strictly personal affairs being as sufficient for them as is the day's share of good and evil for the day; but Larry, looking often over his shoulder as he galloped, did not fail to note, despite his engrossment in his new purchase, the ease and competence that marked Christian's dealings with the chestnut mare, to whom the twin gifts of imagination and invention had been lavishly granted. It has been ingeniously said that the enemy of the aboriginal horse was a creature of about the size of a dinner-plate, that lay hidden in gra.s.s; nothing less than a concealed dinner-service would have sufficed to account for the mysterious alarms that repeatedly swept Nancy from her course; wafting her, like a leaf, sideways from a stream, impelling her to swing, from the summit of a bank, back to the field from which she had wildly sprung; suggesting to her that safety from the besetting dangers could alone be secured by following the bay horse (whom, after the manner of young horses, she had adopted as a father) so closely, and at such a rate of speed, that a live torpedo attached to his tail could hardly have been a less desirable companion.

At a momentary check, an elderly farmer, many of whose horses had owed to Christian their first introduction to a side saddle, spoke to her.

"For G.o.d's sake, Miss Christian," he said, fervently, "go home with that mare! She's very peevish! I wouldn't like to be looking at her!

She has that way of jumping stones her nose'd nearly reach the ground before her feet!"

"Never fear that young lady's able for her!" struck in another farmer, the former owner of Nancy. "How well yourself'd be asking her to be riding nags that couldn't see the way that little mare'd go! Didn't I see her go mountains over the stone gap awhile ago? And yourself seen the same, John Kearney!"

"If it was mountains and pressy-pices that was in it itself," returned John Kearney, severely, "I'd say the same, Michael Donovan. Miss Christian knows me, and I'm telling her--"

At this point, however, Christian's attention was absorbed by Dido, who was comporting herself with precocious zeal, and, an instant after, the dispute was ended by the shriek with which she proclaimed her success. For some fifteen minutes the hounds ran hard and fast; Nancy began to settle down, and to realise that her adopted parent invariably changed feet on a bank, and never jumped stones as if he were a cork bursting perpendicularly from a bottle of champagne. The fox was taking them through the best of the Broadwater Vale country; pasture-field followed pasture-field, in suave succession, the banks were broad and benevolent, the going clean and firm. The sun had just risen, and was throwing the long blue shadows of the hedge-row trees on the dew-grey gra.s.s. The river valley was full of silver mists, changing and thinning, like the visions of a _clairvoyant_, yielding slowly the beauty of the river, and of its garlanding trees, to those who had eyes to see. The sky became bluer each instant as the sun rushed up, and Bill Kirby said to himself that the hunt was too good to last, and the scent would soon be scorched out.

Not long afterwards came the check. The fox had run through a strip of plantation, and in the succeeding field the scent failed. It was a wide pasture-field, in which a number of young cattle were running, snorting, bellowing, and gathering themselves into defensive groups at the unwonted sight of hounds.

"That's a nice little plan of a mare!" said the young farmer who had helped Larry with the hounds, drawing up beside Christian, "and you have her in grand condition, Miss; she's as round as a bottle! She has a great jump in her!" he went on. "She fled the last fence entirely; she didn't leave an iron on it! She was hopping off the ground like a ball!"

"That was no credit to her!" said John Kearney, eyeing the mare and her rider gloomily.

"'Twas a sweet gallop altogether," said Nancy's former owner, addressing Christian, and ignoring Mr. Kearney's challenge, "and the mare carried you to fortune! But sure it'd be as good for you to take her home now, Miss Christian, she has enough done. The fences from this out aren't too good at all." He cast a glance at Kearney.

"Faith, and that's true for you," said Kearney quickly, "Be said by us now, Miss Christian, and go home. The road isn't but two fields back.

The hounds'll do no more good, sure the sun's too strong."

"Where are we?" broke in Larry, joining the group; "I've lost my bearings."

"Them's the Carmodys' bounds, sir," said Michael Donovan in a colourless voice, indicating the next fence.

"Carmody's?" said Larry. "Then isn't the Derrylugga gorse somewhere hereabouts? I see he's casting them ahead."

"It's burnt down," said Christian, hurriedly. Something in her face checked Larry's exclamation. In Ireland people learn to be silent on a very imperceptible hint.

The farmers moved away. Said Michael Donovan in a low voice to John Kearney:

"Will she go back, d'ye think?"

"I d'no. Har'ly, I think!"

"It'd be a pity anything'd happen her. She's a lovely girl to ride!"

"You may say that, Michael! The father gave her the sate, but it was the Lord Almighty gave her the hands!" said old Kearney, devoutly.

"Maybe He'll mind her, so!" responded Michael Donovan, without irreverence.

The shifting of responsibility brought some ease of mind.

"G.o.d grant it!" said John Kearney.

Christian was ordinarily possessed of an innate reasonableness that responded to reason, but fear was not in her, and an appeal to reason was least potent with her when she was in the saddle. The veiled hints of danger, by which from, Evans onwards, she had been beset, only woke the spirit of revolt that slept in her but little less lightly than it had slept in her childhood, and were as fuel on the flame the run had kindled.

"Larry," she said, with a light in her eyes, and a flush in her cheeks, "do _you_ think I ought to go back?"

"Go back? Why should you?"

Larry, having received a hasty sketch of the position, gave his advice with all the a.s.surance of complete ignorance. "Your father has the sporting rights--anyhow, I don't believe they'll stop you. Irishmen are--"

Dissertation as to what Irishmen were or were not, attractive though it was to a young man who knew nothing of the subject, was checked by the success of Bill Kirby's cast ahead. Half way across the big field, the hounds, who had been industriously spreading themselves, and examining blades of gra.s.s and fronds of bracken with the intentness of botanists, came, with a sudden rush, to a deep note from old Bellman, and, as suddenly, broke into full-cry, with the unanimity of an orchestra when the baton comes down. They headed for "Carmody's bounds," and were over that solid barrier, and running hard across the succeeding field, before most of the riders had realised what had happened. The bounds fence was an honest jump--big, but safe. Nancy, at the heels of the bay horse, came up on to it with a perfection that banished all other thoughts from Christian's mind. On the landing side, under the bank, was a strong-running stream, and two or three of the horses, at sight of it, checked on the wide top of the bank, and tried to turn. Not so Nancy. It was enough for her that her father by adoption had not hesitated. She slid her forefeet a little way down the gra.s.sy side and went out over the water as if the bank had been a springboard. It was only then, at the gorgeous moment of successful landing, that Christian was aware of a young man running towards the riders, bawling, and demonstrating with something that might be a gun.

"That's one of the Carmodys, Miss," said old Kearney, galloping near her. "Don't mind him! It's as good for you to go on now. That's the house below--"

"Come on, Christian!" shouted Larry; "he'll do no harm!"

The thought crossed Christian's mind that it might be better to disregard these counsels, and to stop and speak to the a.s.sailant, but Nancy had views of her own, and such arguments as a snaffle could offer were quite unavailing. "I might as well go on," thought Christian, "we shall be off his land in a minute."

A very high bank, crowned with furze and thorn bushes, divided them from the next field; there was but one gap in it, near the farm-house, and this was filled with a complicated erection of stones and sods, built high, with light boughs of trees laid upon them; not a nice place, but the only practicable one. Bill Kirby and his whipper-in jumped it; some of the farmers drew back, but Larry's bay horse charged it unhesitatingly, and soared over it with the whole-souled gallantry of a well-bred horse. Nancy, pulling hard, followed him.

Christian heard Larry shout, and, looking round, saw him turn in his saddle and strike with his crop at something unseen. At the last instant, as the mare was making her spring, a second man appeared on the farther side of the jump, yelling, and brandishing a wide-bladed hay-knife. To stop was impossible; Christian could only utter a sharp cry of warning, as Nancy, baulked by the suddenness of the attack, but unable to stop herself, went up almost straight into the air, and came down on the boughs, with her hindlegs on one side of them and her forelegs on the other. Then she fell forward on to her knees, and rolled on to her off shoulder, her hind legs still entangled in the boughs. Christian fell with her, and as the mare's shoulder came to the ground, her rider was thrown a little beyond her on the off side.

The man, having saved himself by a leap to one side, had instantly taken to his heels.

Christian was on her feet before even Larry, quick as he was in stopping his horse and flinging himself from his back, could reach her.

"Are you hurt?" The question, so fraught with fear, and breathless with remembered disasters, was answered almost before it was uttered.

"Not a sc.r.a.p! Absolutely all right; but I don't know about Nancy--"

One of the mare's hind feet was wedged in the fork of a bough; she struggled fiercely, and in a second or two she had freed both her hind legs from the tangle of twigs, and lay p.r.o.ne at the foot of the barricade.

"She's all right! He didn't touch her," said Larry, catching her by the bridle. "Come, mare!"

Nancy made an effort, attempting to get on to her feet, and rolled over again on to her side.

"Oh, get the mare up, one of you!" shouted Larry, wild with the rage that had gathered force from the terror by which it had first been strangled. "I want to go after that d.a.m.ned coward--"

He caught his horse's bridle from a man who had climbed over the bank, leaving his own horse on the farther side.