to my horse. Don't you
remember tying him there?"

Bob backed her sturdy cob out from between two restless companions, and
with much laughter and whispering and many injunctions to hurry and to
be "awfully still," the three conspirators mounted and walked their
horses quietly down the drive.

"My stirrups seem a lot too long," Betty whispered softly, as they
passed down the avenue, dusky with the shadows of tall elms. "Whoa,
Tony! Wait just a minute, girls. Why--oh, Bob, Madeline,--I've got the
wrong horse. Somebody must have changed them around. This is Lady."

Whether it was Betty's nervous clutch on the reins as she made this dire
discovery and remembered Lady's antics on the ferry-boat, or whether the
saucy little breeze which chose that moment to stir the elm branches and
set the shadows dancing on the white road, was responsible, is a matter
of doubt. At any rate Lady jerked back her pretty head impatiently, as
if in answer to her name, shivered daintily, reared, and ran. She dodged
cat-like, between Bob and Madeline and out through the narrow gateway,
turned sharply to the right, away from Harding, and galloped off up the
level road that lay white in the moonlight, between the Golf Club and a
pine wood half a mile away.

Betty had presence of mind enough to dig her knees into Lady's sides,
and so managed somehow, in spite of her mis-fit stirrups, to stay on at
the gate. She tugged hard at the reins as Lady flew along, and murmured
soothing words into Lady's quivering ears. But it wasn't any use. Betty
had wondered sometimes how it felt to be run away with. Now she knew. It
felt like a rush of cold wind that made you dizzy and faint. You
thought of all sorts of funny little things that happened to you ages
ago. You wondered who would plan Jessica's costumes if anything happened
to you. You wished you weren't on so many committees; it would bother
Marie so to appoint some one in your place. You made a neat little list
of those committees in your mind. Then you got to the pine wood, and
something did happen, for Lady went on alone.

Madeline, straining her eyes at the gateway, waiting for Bob and Mr.
Ware to come, couldn't see that.

"She was still on the last I could see," she told them huskily, and Mr.
Ware whipped his horse into a run and rushed after Lady.

Madeline looked despairingly at Bob. "Let's go too," she said. "I can't
stand it to wait here."

"All right."

They rode fast, but it seemed ages