Charles felled all the more for the protest. The
dead bodies of the trees fell across each other, and daylight peeped
through the thick woods. It was like the clearing of a primeval forest.

Richard Bassett went about with a witness and counted the fallen.

The poor were allowed the lopwood: they thronged in for miles round,
and each built himself a great wood pile for the winter; the poor
blessed Sir Charles: he gave the proceeds, thirteen thousand pounds, to
his wife for her separate use. He did not tie it up. He restricted her
no further than this: she undertook never to draw above 100 pounds at a
time without consulting Mr. Oldfield as to the application. Sir Charles
said he should add to this fund every year; his beloved wife should not
be poor, even if the hated cousin should outlive him and turn her out
of Huntercombe.

And so passed the summer of that year; then the autumn; and then came a
singularly mild winter. There was more hunting than usual, and Richard
Bassett, whom his wife's fortune enabled to cut a better figure than
before, was often in the field, mounted on a great bony horse that was
not so fast as some, being half-bred, but a wonderful jumper.

Even in this pastime the cousins were rivals. Sir Charles's favorite
horse was a magnificent thoroughbred, who was seldom far off at the
finish: over good ground Richard's cocktail had no chance with him; but
sometimes, if toward the close of the run they came to stiff fallows
and strong fences, the great strength of the inferior animal, and that
prudent reserve of his powers which distinguishes the canny cocktail
from the higher-blooded animal, would give him the advantage.

Of this there occurred, on a certain 18th of November, an example
fraught with very serious consequences.

That day the hounds met on Sir Charles's estate. Sir Charles and Lady
Bassett breakfasted in Pink; he had on his scarlet coat, white tie,
irreproachable buckskins, and top-boots. (It seemed a pity a speck of
dirt should fall on them.) Lady Bassett was in her riding-habit; and
when she mounted her pony, and went to cover by his side, with her
blue-velvet cap and her red-brown hair, she looked more like a
brilliant flower than a mere woman.

A veteran fox was soon found, and went away with unusual courage and
speed, and Lady Bassett paced homeward to wait her lord's return, with
an anxiety men laugh at, but women can appreciate. It was a form of
quiet suffering she had consta