are, on whose education as a hunter he was entering. It
was one of those gorgeous mornings of late September, when everything
is intense in colour and in sentiment. A light white frost was
melting, in the first rays of the sun, to a silver dew, that twinkled
on grass and bush and twig. Now and then a beech leaf, prematurely
gold, came spinning down in the still air; from high places of heaven
a tiny gabble of music, cold, and shrill, and sweet, told of the songs
of the larks at those heavenly gates within which Larry's and
Christian's spirits were dwelling.

"Yes!" Christian repeated, as they rode tranquilly along on the grass
beside one of the long Castle Ire avenues, "it shall remain a secret
as long as possible, unprofaned by the vulgar! It's like this morning;
the dew's on it still. Larry, you've got to try!"

"Got to try, have I?" said Larry, beaming at her fatuously.

The horses were sidling close to one another after the manner of
stable companions; Larry put his hand on the bay horse's withers and
gazed into Christian's laughing eyes, while the blue of the southern
Irish sky uttered its strong, splendid note of colour behind the pale
rose of her face, and the ineffable freshness of the morning thrilled
in him.

"If you look at me like that in general society," he declared, "I
shall either give it away on the spot--or burst! Look here, here's the
measured-mile gallop; I'll race you to the hall door! If I get in
first, I shall tell everyone we're engaged!"

"Done!" said Christian, instantly shortening her reins; "but I back
Joker!"

She touched Joker with her heel and the big horse sprang, at the hint,
into a gallop. Quickly as he started, Rayleen, the grey mare (whose
name, being interpreted, is Little Star), being ever concentrated for
instant effort, as is the manner of small and well-bred
four-year-olds, was up to his shoulder in a couple of bounds, even in
the flame of her youth and enthusiasm, she drove ahead of Joker's
ordered strides, and led him for awhile. Larry's laugh of triumph,
that the wind tossed back to her, was not needed to rouse Christian to
emulation. Any hint of a race, any touch of a contest, appealed to her
as instantly as to Rayleen, and she was racing for that secret that
was like a pearl. Sitting very still she touched Joker again with her
heel and spoke to him. There was in her the magnetism that can fire a
horse to his best, by some mystery, compound of sympathy and
stimulation