some confounded echo
started the beast, and incited her to increased speed. Just as this
notion struck me, I heard a voice behind cry out--

'Do hold in! Try and hold in, Mr. O'Leary!' I turned my head, and there
was Laura, scarce a length behind, her thoroughbred straining every
sinew to come up. No one else was in sight, and there we were, galloping
like mad, with the wood all to ourselves.

I can very well conceive why the second horse in a race does his best to
get foremost, if it were only the indulgence of a very natural piece of
curiosity to see what the other has been running for; but why the first
one only goes the faster because there are others behind him, that is a
dead puzzle to me. But so it was; my ill-starred beast never seemed to
have put forth her full powers till she was followed. _Ventre a terre_,
as the French say, was now the pace; and though from time to time Laura
would cry out to me to hold back, I could almost swear I heard her
laughing at my efforts. Meanwhile the wood was becoming thicker and
closer, and the _allee_ narrower and evidently less travelled. Still it
seemed to have no end or exit; scarcely had we rounded one turn when a
vista of miles would seem to stretch away before us, passing over which,
another, as long again, would appear.

After about an hour's hard galloping, if I dare form any conjecture as
to the flight of time, I perceived with a feeling of triumph that the
roan was relaxing somewhat in her stride; and that she was beginning to
evince, by an up-and-down kind of gait, what sailors call a 'fore-and
aft' motion, that she was getting enough of it. I turned and saw Laura
about twenty yards behind--her thoroughbred dead beat, and only able
to sling along at that species of lobbing canter blood-cattle can
accomplish under any exigency. With a bold effort I pulled up short, and
she came alongside of me; and before I could summon courage to meet
the reproaches I expected for having been the cause of her runaway, she
relieved my mind by a burst of as merry and good-tempered laughter as
ever I listened to. The emotion was contagious, and so I laughed too,
and it was full five minutes before either of us could speak.

'Well, Mr. O'Leary, I hope you know where we are,' said she, drying her
eyes, where the sparkling drops of mirth were standing, 'for I assure
you I don't.'

'Oh, perfectly,' replied I, as my eye caught a board nailed against
a tree, on which some very ill-paint