,
and the usual retinue of foot runners raised an ecstatic yell as Mrs.
Pat forged ahead and sent her big horse over the fence at the end of the
field in a style that happily combined swagger with knowledge.

The hounds were streaking along over a succession of pasture fields, and
the cattle gaps which were to be found in every fence vexed the proud
soul of Mrs. Pat. She was too good a sportswoman to school her horse
over needless jumps when hounds were running, but it infuriated her to
have to hustle with these outsiders for her place at a gap. So she
complained to Major Booth, with a vehemence of adjective that, though it
may be forgiven to her, need not be set down here.

"Is _all_ the wretched country like this?" she inquired indignantly, as
the Shelburne Porter's pony splashed ahead of her through a muddy ford,
just beyond which the hounds had momentarily checked; "you told me to
bring out a big-jumped horse, and I might have gone the whole hunt on a
bicycle!"

Major Booth's reply was to point to the hounds. They had cast back to
the line that they had flashed over, and had begun to run again at
right angles from the grassy valley down which they had come, up towards
the heather-clad hills that lay back of Carnfother.

"Say your prayers, Mrs. Pat!" he said, in what Mrs. Pat felt to be a
gratuitously offensive manner, "and I'll ask the lady in the pretty blue
habit to have an eye to you. This is a hill fox and he's going to make
you and Pilot sit up!"

Mrs. Pat was not in a mood to be trifled with, and I again think it
better to omit her response to this inconvenient jesting. What she did
was to give Pilot his head, and she presently found herself as near the
hounds as was necessary, galloping in a line with the huntsman straight
for a three-foot wall, lightly built of round stones. That her horse
could refuse to jump it was a possibility that did not so much as enter
her head; but that he did so was a fact whose stern logic could not be
gainsaid. She had too firm a seat to be discomposed by the swinging
plunge with which he turned from it, but her mental balance sustained a
serious shake. That Pilot, at the head of the hunt should refuse, was a
thing that struck at the root of her dearest beliefs. She stopped him
and turned him at the wall again; again he refused, and at the same
instant Major Booth and the blue habit jumped it side by side.

"What did I tell you!" the former called back, with a laugh that gr