and eventually come up with the
hounds again.

She turned her mare short round, and put her at a big straggling hedge
which she had no fears of her being unable to compass. There was,
however, more of a drop on the further side than she had counted upon,
and in some way, as the mare landed, floundering on the further side,
something gave way, and she found that her stirrup-leather had broken.

Vera pulled up and looked about her helplessly. She found herself in
a small spinney of young birch-trees, filling up the extremity of a
triangular field into which she had come. Not a sign of the hounds, or,
indeed, of any living creature was to be seen in any direction. She did
not feel inclined to go on--or even to go back home with her broken
stirrup-leather. It occurred to her that she would get off and see what
she could do towards patching it together herself.

With some little difficulty, her mare being fidgety, and refusing to
stand still, she managed to dismount; but in doing so her wrist caught
against the pommel of her saddle, and was so severely wrenched backwards,
as she sprang to the ground, that she turned quite sick with the pain.

It seemed to her that her wrist must be sprained; at all events, her
right hand was, for the minute, perfectly powerless. The mare, perceiving
that nothing further was expected of her, amused herself by cropping the
short grass at her feet, whilst Vera stood by her side in dire perplexity
as to what she was to do next. Just then she heard the welcome sound of a
horse's hoofs in the adjoining field, and in another minute a hat and
black coat, followed by a horse's head and forelegs appeared on the top
of the fence, and a man dropped over into the spinney just ten yards in
front of her.

Vera took it to be her lover, for the brothers both hunted in black, and
there was a certain family resemblance between their broad shoulders and
the square set of their heads. She called out eagerly,

"Oh, John! how glad I am to see you! I have come to grief!"

"So I see; but I am not John. I hope, however, I may do as well. What is
the matter?"

"It is you, Maurice? Oh, yes, you will do quite as well. I have broken my
stirrup-leather, and I am afraid I have sprained my wrist."

"That sounds bad--let me see."

In an instant he had sprung from his horse to help her.

She looked up at him as he came, pushing the tall brushwood away as
he stepped through it. It struck her suddenly how like he wa