hink you might go
over to the Cabaret Rouge out here. You might find out something."

She was evidently quite proud of her handsome daughter and that anything
should come up to smirch her name cut her deeply.

The Hunt Club was a swagger organization, even in these degenerate days
when farmers will not tolerate broken fences and trampled crops, and
when democratic ideas interfere sadly with the follies of the rich. In a
cap with a big peak, a scarlet hunting coat and white breeches with top
boots, Brackett himself made a striking figure of M. F. H.

There were thirty or forty in the field, the men in silk hats. For the
most part one could not see that the men treated Gloria much
differently. But it was evident that the women did. In fact the coldness
even extended to her mother, who would literally have been frozen out if
it had not been for her quasi-official position. I could see now that it
was also a fight for Mrs. Brackett's social life.

As we watched Gloria, we could see that Franconi was hovering around,
unsuccessfully trying to get an opportunity to say a word to her alone.
Just before we were off a telegram came to her, which she read and
hastily stuffed into a pocket of her riding habit.

But that was all that happened and I fell to studying the various types
of human nature, from the beginner who rode very hard and very badly and
made himself generally odious to the M. F. H., to the old seasoned
hunter who talked of the old days of real foxes and how he used to know
all the short cuts to the coverts.

It was a keen, crisp day. Already a man had been over the field pulling
along the ground a little bag of aniseed, and now the hunt was about to
start.

Noses down, sterns feathering zigzag over the ground, sniffing earth and
leaves and grass, the hounds were brought up. One seemed to get a good
whiff of the trail and lifted his head with a half yelp, half whine,
high pitched, frenzied, never-to-be-forgotten. Others joined in the
music. "Gone away!" sounded a huntsman as if there were a real fox. We
were off after them. Drag hounds, however, for the most part run mute
and very fast, so that that picturesque feature was missing. But the
light soil and rail fences of Long Island were ideal for drag hunting.
Nor was it so easy as it seemed to follow. Also there was the spice of
danger, risk to the hunters, the horses and the dogs.

We went for four or five miles. Then there was a check for the
stragglers t