ch of country. She urged her animal towards it.

The mist was thickening in the valley, and it had begun to drizzle. The
watch on her wrist said two o'clock, and she determined to turn her face
homewards as soon as she had taken this final glimpse.

The grey, snorting and sweating, stumbled up the slippery ascent. He was
plainly disgusted with his rider's tactics. They arrived upon the summit,
and Anne brought him to a standstill. But though she still heard vague
shoutings below her the mist had increased so much in the few minutes
they had taken over the ascent that she could discern nothing. Her horse
was winded after the climb, however, and she remained motionless to give
him time to recover. The hubbub was dying away, and she surmised that the
fox had led his pursuers out on the farther side of the woods. She
shivered as the chill damp crept about her. A feeling of loneliness that
was almost physical possessed her. She half wished that she had not
forsaken the hunt after all.

Stay! Was she quite alone? Out of the clinging, ever-thickening curtain
there came sounds--the sounds of hoofs that struggled upwards, of an
animal's laboured breathing, of a man's voice that encouraged and swore
alternately.

Her heart gave a sudden sharp throb. She knew that voice. Though she had
only met the owner thereof three times she had come to know it rather
well. Why had he elected to come that way, she asked herself? He almost
seemed to be dogging her steps that day.

Impulse urged her to strike in another direction before he reached
her. She did not feel inclined for another _tete-a-tete_ with Nap
Errol just then.

She tapped the grey smartly with her switch, more smartly than she
intended, for he started and plunged. At the same instant there broke out
immediately below them a hubbub of yelling and baying that was like the
shrieking of a hundred demons. It rose up through the fog as from the
mouth of an invisible pit, and drove the grey horse clean out of his
senses. He reared bolt upright in furious resistance to his rider's will,
pawed the air wildly, and being brought down again by a sharp cut over
the ears, flung out his heels in sheer malice and bolted down the hill,
straight for that pandemonium of men and hounds. If the pleasures of the
hunt failed to attract his mistress, it was otherwise with him, and he
meant to have his fling in spite of her.

For the first few seconds of that mad flight Anne scarcely attempted t