of a hill which formed one side
of a hollow out of which several valleys opened. There were great
trees about them, and it was only here and there a ray of sunlight
pierced the dim green shadow, while below them a stream went frothing
down a miniature canon whose banks were cumbered by fallen timber. It
was, the girl fancied, an especially difficult place for a horseman to
pick his way through.

Meanwhile the sound above grew louder, and presently an object
apparently travelling like a thunderbolt came out of the shadow. It
was, notwithstanding the speed it made, gambolling playfully, with head
tossed sideways and tail in the air, and when Miss Deringham fancied it
must turn aside for a tangled brake, went smashing straight through it.
As it emerged with an exultant flourish of head and tail two other
objects became visible behind it, and Seaforth pushed forward when the
mounted figures came sweeping down the mountain side. Here and there
they swung wide round a fallen tree, but they rode straight through
raspberry-canes and breast-high fern, and Alice Deringham wondered when
she saw that one of them was a girl. She had left her hat somewhere in
the bush, her hair streamed about her, the skirt was blown aside; but
she held on with set lips and two vivid spots of colour in her
warm-tinted face, a length or two behind her companion. He was riding
hard, and there was a red smear across his face where a branch had
smote him.

Miss Deringham turned to watch them, realizing that whatever the steer
risked, its pursuers were in peril of life and limb. Sometimes one
horse rose above fern and thicket, or twisted, apparently with the
sinuosity of a snake, in and out amidst the clustered trunks, while
once the girl lurched forward. Miss Deringham gasped, but part of the
fluttering skirt was rent away, and the little lithe figure swept on
again. The pair were, it was evident, closing with the steer, and the
latter apparently cut off from the valley it made for by the ravine.
This was not, however, to prove an insuperable obstacle, for as Miss
Deringham with difficulty edged her horse nearer, the beast charged
straight at the hollow, and dropped into it. Then, while she regarded
its capture as certain, it rose into view again, and floundered up the
almost vertical slope on the other side with no very obvious
difficulty. Miss Deringham, who found this riding down of a Canadian
steer almost as exciting as anything she had