stick. Try it again, Boy! Let's hear you once more, eh?"

Hugh smiled, but could not do more than shake his head.

"Thank you for explaining, Guardian!" he said. "I was Pegasus, you see,
and Bellerophon and I were just going to plunge down through the clouds
and kill the Chimaera; but I forgot where I was for a minute, and began
to paw in the valley, and say 'Aha!' and, of course, the cloud broke
through, and down we went. I hope dear Bellerophon isn't hurt."

"Bellerophon is all right!" said Jack. "Right as a trivet. He says he
thinks you'd better go home, old man; he thinks it will be better
Chimaera-hunting to-morrow, anyhow."

"Yes! yes!" cried the Colonel, making a brave effort to enter into the
child's idea.

"Go back to the stable, Boy,--I mean Dobbin, or whatever your name is,
and--and have some hay!"

But Hugh's brow contracted.

"Pegasus didn't eat hay!" he murmured, still leaning against
Hildegarde's shoulder.

"No, dear," said the girl. "The Colonel did not mean hay; he meant
asphodels and amaranth and moly."

"That sounds better," said Hugh.

"I say," whispered Gerald, who was beginning to recover from his alarm,
"you know, I suppose, that asphodel is a kind of pigweed?"

"Hush! Yes! There is no need of the child's knowing it yet. How shall we
get him home, Jack?"

"But I will walk home!" cried Hugh, hearing the last words. "I will
perhaps trot home, only slowly."

He tried to rise, but sank back again.

"It appears as if there were wheels in my head," he murmured. "They go
round too fast."

"Of course they do," said Jack, in the most matter-of-fact way. "I'm
going to harness myself into them, and take you home that way. Put him
up on my back, will you, Merryweather? So! there we are!"

Delighted to find himself in the once familiar position, Hugh looked up
to smile at the anxious Colonel, who stood wiping his brow, and wishing
for once that he were twenty and a giraffe.

"I'm all right now, Guardian!" he said. "All right, Beloved! My Jack is
an ostrich again, and I am not Pegasus any more just now. I am only
Hugh. Good-bye! Good hunting!"

"Only Hugh!" repeated Colonel Ferrers, gazing after the two, as they
went across the field, Jack walking steadily, with long, even steps,
very different from his usual hop-skip-and-jump method of progression.

"Only Hugh! Only the greater part of the world--eh? what are you saying,
Hilda, my dear?"

"Only that we will go home together, dear Colo