elous or Tiber, emerging from his native waves, crowned with aquatic
plants, presented, I doubt not, an appearance at once dignified and
becoming, but I defy any ordinary non-amphibious mortal to look, under
similar circumstances, any thing but supremely ridiculous. The wrathful
face framed in dripping hair and plastered whiskers--the movements of
the limbs, awkward and constrained--the rivulets distilling from every
salient angle, turning the victim into a walking Lauterbrunnen--when we
saw all these absurdities exaggerated before us, no wonder that from the
whole party, including the groom, there broke "unnumbered laughters."

"Curse the mare!" Bruce hissed out. The words came crushed and broken,
as it were, through the white ranges of his grinding teeth.

Livingstone's face hardened directly. "Swear as much as you think the
circumstances require, or as my cousin will allow," he said, "but be
just before you're generous: don't anathematize Kathleen. It was no
fault of hers. I never saw her refuse before; but she is used to be put
straight at her fences. Hold her still, Harry" (to the groom on the
farther side, who had caught the mare's rein); "I'll ride her at it
myself."

He threw his bridle to Forrester, and, dismounting, cleared the brook at
a bound. Then he went up to Kathleen, and began to coax her with voice
and hand.

"I'll bet an even fifty he takes her over the first time," said Charley.

Bruce nodded his head, without speaking, to show that he took the bet. I
thought he had the best of it, for the mare was so savage and sulky
still that a refusal seemed a certainty.

Guy had mounted by this time, and, after taking a wide sweep in the
field, came down at the brook. Kathleen was curling her back up, and
going short, with the most evident intention of balking; but swerving
was next to impossible, for she was fairly held in a vice by her rider's
hands and knees. The whip fell heavily twice on either shoulder, and,
just at the water's edge, Livingstone drove his heels in and lifted her.
It was almost a standing leap, and, as Kathleen landed, a fragment of
the bank went crashing into the water from under her hind hoofs, and she
went down on her head; but Guy recovered her cleverly, and, turning
again, sent her over it twice, backward and forward. The first time the
mare did not try to refuse again, but rushed at it, snorting wrathfully,
with her head in the air; the second she was quite tamed, and took it
ev