ughters as roughriders--shot past her down the leafy road, closely
followed by a stranger on a weedy bay horse, which Nora instantly
recognised as the solitary hireling of the; neighbourhood.

Through the belt of wood and out into the open country went the five
couple, and after them went Muriel, Nora and the strange man. There had
been an instant when the colt had thought that it seemed a pity to leave
the road, but, none the less, he had the next instant found himself in
the air, a considerable distance above a low stone wall, with a tingling
streak across his ribs, and a bewildering sensation of having been
hustled. The field in which he alighted was a sloping one and he ramped
down it very enjoyably to himself, with all the weight of his sixteen
hands and a half concentrated in his head, when suddenly a tall grassy
bank confronted him, with, as he perceived with horror, a ditch in front
of it. He tried to swerve, but there seemed something irrevocable about
the way in which the bank faced him, and if his method of "changing
feet" was not strictly conventional, he achieved the main point and
found all four safely under him when he landed, which was as much--if
not more than as much--as either he or Muriel expected. The Miss
Purcells were a practical people, and were thankful for minor mercies.

It was at about this point that the stranger on the hireling drew level;
he had not been at the meet, and Muriel turned her head to see who it
was that was kicking old McConnell's screw along so well. He lifted his
cap, but he was certainly a stranger. She saw a discreetly clipped and
pointed brown beard, with a rather long and curling moustache.

"Fed on furze!" thought Muriel, with a remembrance of the foxy mare's
upper lip when she came in "off the hill".

Then she met the strange man's eyes--was he quite a stranger? What was
it about the greeny-grey gleam of them that made her heart give a
curious lift, and then sent the colour running from it to her face and
back again to her heart?

"I thought you were going to cut me--Muriel!" said the strange man.

In the meantime the five couple and Carnage were screaming down the
heathery side of Liss Cranny Hill, on a scent that was a real comfort to
them after nearly five miserable months of kennels and road-work, and a
glorious wind under their sterns. Jerry, the Whip, was riding like a
madman to stop them; they knew that well, and went the faster for it.
Sir Thomas was blowi