ide her in my saddle!" went on Mary at lightning
speed, taking control of the situation in a manner prophetic of her
future successful career as a matron. "There isn't time to change--"

"The devil I shall!" said Dinny Johnny, and an unworthy thought of what
his friends would say flitted across his mind.

"And you'll have to sit sideways, because the lowest crutch is so far
back there's not room for your leg if you sit saddleways," continued his
preceptor breathlessly. "I know it--Jimmy said so when he rode her to
the meet for me last week. Oh hurry--hurry! How slow you are!"

Mr. Denny never quite knew how he got into the horrors of the saddle,
still less how he and "Matchbox" got into the road. At one acute moment,
indeed, he had believed he was going to precede her thither, but they
alighted more or less together, and turning her, by a handy gap, into
the field on the other side of the road, he set off at a precarious
gallop, followed by the encouraging shrieks of Mary.

"Thank the Lord there's no one looking, and it's a decent old saddle
with a pommel on the offside," he said to himself piously, while he
grasped the curving snout of the pommel in question, "I'd be a dead man
this minute only for that."

He felt as though he were wedged in among the claws of a giant crab, but
without the sense of retention that might be hoped for under such
circumstances. The lowest crutch held one leg in aching durance; there
was but just room for the other between the two upper horns, and the
saddle was so short and hollow in the seat that its high-ridged cantle
was the only portion from which he derived any support--a support that
was suddenly and painfully experienced after each jump. He could see,
very far off, the pink coat of "Owld Sta'" following a line which seemed
each moment to be turning more directly for Madore, and in his agony he
gave the pony an imprudent dig of the spur that sent her on and off a
boggy fence in two goat-like bounds, and gave the sunlight opportunity
to play intermittently upon the hollow seat of the saddle. She had never
carried him so well, and as she put her little head down and raced at
the fences, the unfortunate Dinny Johnny felt that though he was
probably going to break his neck, no one would ever be able to mention
his early demise without a grin.

Field after field fled by him in painful succession till he found
himself safe on the farther side of a big stone-faced "double," the last
f