inkled with cattle,
dotted with groups of trees clustering round white farm houses, from
whose chimneys the thin, blue lines of the smoke of morning fires were
just beginning to ascend.

But few are able to spare much thought for others during a first burst
out of covert, their strictly personal affairs being as sufficient for
them as is the day's share of good and evil for the day; but Larry,
looking often over his shoulder as he galloped, did not fail to note,
despite his engrossment in his new purchase, the ease and competence
that marked Christian's dealings with the chestnut mare, to whom the
twin gifts of imagination and invention had been lavishly granted. It
has been ingeniously said that the enemy of the aboriginal horse was a
creature of about the size of a dinner-plate, that lay hidden in
grass; nothing less than a concealed dinner-service would have
sufficed to account for the mysterious alarms that repeatedly swept
Nancy from her course; wafting her, like a leaf, sideways from a
stream, impelling her to swing, from the summit of a bank, back to the
field from which she had wildly sprung; suggesting to her that safety
from the besetting dangers could alone be secured by following the bay
horse (whom, after the manner of young horses, she had adopted as a
father) so closely, and at such a rate of speed, that a live torpedo
attached to his tail could hardly have been a less desirable
companion.

At a momentary check, an elderly farmer, many of whose horses had owed
to Christian their first introduction to a side saddle, spoke to her.

"For God's sake, Miss Christian," he said, fervently, "go home with
that mare! She's very peevish! I wouldn't like to be looking at her!
She has that way of jumping stones her nose'd nearly reach the ground
before her feet!"

"Never fear that young lady's able for her!" struck in another farmer,
the former owner of Nancy. "How well yourself'd be asking her to be
riding nags that couldn't see the way that little mare'd go! Didn't I
see her go mountains over the stone gap awhile ago? And yourself seen
the same, John Kearney!"

"If it was mountains and pressy-pices that was in it itself," returned
John Kearney, severely, "I'd say the same, Michael Donovan. Miss
Christian knows me, and I'm telling her--"

At this point, however, Christian's attention was absorbed by Dido,
who was comporting herself with precocious zeal, and, an instant
after, the dispute was ended by the shri