th gorse seed
a-top, all round his section, drains it in a rough and ready fashion,
and then the splendid fertile soil which has been waiting for so many
thousand years, "brings forth fruit abundantly." Such enormous fields of
wheat and oats and barley as you come upon sometimes,--with, alas, never
a market near enough to enable the plenteous crop to return sevenfold
into its master's bosom!

I shall not inflict upon you a description of all our rides in search of
members for our congregation. Two, in widely differing directions,
will serve as specimens of such excursions. In consideration of my
new-chumishness, F---- selected a comparatively easy track for our
first ride. And yet, "bad was the best," might surely be said of that
breakneck path. What would an English horse, or an English lady say,
to riding for miles over a slippery winding ledge on a rocky hill side,
where a wall of solid mountain rose up perpendicularly on the right
hand, and on the left a very respectable sized river hurried over its
boulders far beneath the aerial path; yet this was comparatively a
safe track, and presented but one serious obstacle, over which I was
ruthlessly taken. It is perhaps needless to say we were riding in
single file, and equally unnecessary to state that I was the last; for
certainly we should never have made much progress otherwise. Helen, my
bay mare, would follow her stable companion, on which F---- was mounted,
so that was the way we got on at all.

A sudden sharp turn showed me what appeared to be a low stone wall
running own the spur of the mountain, right across our track, and I had
already begun to disquiet myself about the possibility of turning back
on such a narrow ledge, when I saw F----'s powerful black horse, with
his ears well forward, and his reins, lying loose on his neck, make a
sort of rush at the obstacle, climb up it as a cat would, stand for
an instant, exactly like a performing goat, with all four legs drawn
closely together under him, and then with a spring disappear on the
other side. "This wall", I thought, "must be but loosely built, for
_Leo_ has displaced some of the stones from its coping." Helen, pretty
dear, hurried after her friend and leader; and before I had time to
realize what she was going to do, she was balancing herself on the
crumbling summit of this stone wall (which was only the freak of a
landslip), and as it proved impossible to remain there, perched like
a bird on a very inse