hore, and
Garda was again holding her skirt slightly lifted; her thin slippers
were seen to be as completely drenched as though they had been in the
stream. "Yes, they're wet," she assented, lifting first one, and then
the other, so as to get a good view; "they're quite wet through, soles
and all. And, do you know, my feet are already very cold."

"And we have still the long drive home! You must acknowledge that you
are wise."

At this moment they heard a sound, and turned; Madam Giron's horse had
broken his fastenings, and started down the barren, the phaeton gently
rolling along behind him. Winthrop ran across the pine-tree bridge and
after him, as swiftly yet as noiselessly as he could, so that the sound
of pursuit should not increase his speed. But Madam Giron's horse
enjoyed a run on his own account, and after trotting for a while, he
broke into the pace which suited him best, a long-stepped easy gallop;
thus, with the phaeton bounding at his heels, he took his way down the
broad green vista, faster and faster, yet still with a regular motion,
which was doubly exasperating because it seemed so much more like an
easy gait for the saddle (which it was) than a demoralized running away.
At length, when Winthrop himself had run half a mile, in the vain hope
that he would stop or turn, Madam Giron's steed disappeared in the
distance, having reached and gone down, Garda said, the curve of the
earth, as a ship does at sea.

"Isn't it funny? What are we going to do now?" she asked. She had come
back across the bridge while he was vainly pursuing the chase.

"If it were not for your wet feet I should put you on my horse and start
towards home, hoping to meet some one with a cart. As it is, I think you
had better try to walk for a while."

"It would be very uncomfortable in these wet things. No; I couldn't."

"I hardly know what we can do, then, unless you will take off your
stockings and those silly slippers, and wrap your feet up in something
dry. Then I could put you on the horse."

"But there's nothing to wrap them up in."

"Yes; my coat."

Garda laughed. "To think of seeing _you_ without one!"

But at length this was done; the pretty little feet, white and cold, she
dried with her handkerchief, and then wrapped up as well as she could in
his coat, securing the wrapping with the black ribbon which had been her
belt. Thus protected he lifted her, laughing at her own helplessness, on
the horse, where she sat sid