ill, shaded his eyes with his hand.
The noise swelled and rounded in volume; it was nearing rapidly. As
he looked, the hunt dashed into full view between the tree-boles--a
galloping melee of khaki and scarlet, swarming across the fresh green of
a wheat field, behind a spotted swirl of hounds. It mounted a rise,
dipped momentarily into a gully and then, in a narrow sweeping curve,
came pounding on up the long slope, directly toward the house.

"Confound it!" said John Valiant belligerently; "they're on my land!"

They were near enough now for him to hear the voices of the men, calling
encouragement to the dogs, and to see the white ribbons of foam across
the flanks of the laboring horses. One scarlet-coated feminine rider,
detached from the bunch, had spurred in advance and was leading by a
clean hundred yards, bareheaded, her hat fallen back to the limit of
its ribbon knotted under her chin, and her waving hair gleaming like
tarnished gold.

"How she rides!" muttered the solitary watcher. "Cross-saddle, of
course,--the sensible little sport! She'll never in the world do that
wall!--Yes, by George!" For, with a beseeching cry and a straining tug,
she had fairly lifted her big golden-chestnut hunter over the high
barrier in a leap as clean as the flight of a flying squirrel. He saw
her lean forward to pat the wet arching neck as the horse settled again
into its pace.

John Valiant's admiration turned to delight. "Why," he said, "it's the
Lady-of-the-Roses!"

He put his hands on the sill and vaulted to the porch.

CHAPTER XIV

SANCTUARY

The tawny scudding streak that led that long chase had shot into the
yard, turning for a last desperate double. It saw the man in the
foreground and its bounding, agonized little wild heart that so prayed
for life, gave way. With a final effort, it gained the porch and
crouched down in its corner, an abject, sweated, hunted morsel, at
hopeless bay.

Like a flash, Valiant stooped, caught the shivering thing by the scruff,
and as its snapping jaws grazed his thumb, dropped it through the open
window behind him. "Sanctuary!" quoth he, and banged the shutter to.

At the same instant, as the place overflowed with a pandemonium of
nosing leaping hounds, he saw the golden-chestnut reined sharply down
among the ragged box-rows, with a shamefaced though brazen knowledge
that the girl who rode it had seen.

She sat moveless, her head held high, one hand on the hunter's
foam-fl