o not know," said Sophia; "but I sincerely trust that if
he does, he will refrain to-day."

"Don't say so," said the eldest sportswoman. "If you'll only begin
it will come as easy to you as going along the road;" and then, not
being able to spare more of these idle moments, they both went off to
their horses, walking as though their habits were no impediments to
them, and in half a minute they were seated.

"What is Harriet on to-day?" asked Staveley of a constant member of
the hunt. Now Harriet was the eldest Miss Tristram.

"A little brown mare she got last week. That was a terrible brush we
had on Friday. You weren't out, I think. We killed in the open, just
at the edge of Rotherham Common. Harriet was one of the few that was
up, and I don't think the chestnut horse will be the better of it
this season."

"That was the horse she got from Griggs?"

"Yes; she gave a hundred and fifty for him; and I'm told he was as
nearly done on Friday as any animal you ever put your eyes on. They
say Harriet cried when she got home." Now the gentleman who was
talking about Harriet on this occasion was one with whom she would no
more have sat down to table than with her own groom.

But though Harriet may have cried when she got home on that fatal
Friday evening, she was full of the triumph of the hunt on this
morning. It is not often that the hounds run into a fox and
absolutely surround and kill him on the open ground, and when this
is done after a severe run, there are seldom many there to see it.
If a man can fairly take a fox's brush on such an occasion as that,
let him do it; otherwise let him leave it to the huntsman. On the
occasion in question it seems that Harriet Tristram might have done
so, and some one coming second to her had been gallant enough to do
it for her.

"Oh, my lord, you should have been out on Friday," she said to Lord
Alston. "We had the prettiest thing I ever saw."

"A great deal too pretty for me, my dear."

"Oh, you who know the roads so well would certainly have been up. I
suppose it was thirteen miles from Cobbleton's Bushes to Rotherham
Common."

"Not much less, indeed," said his lordship, unwilling to diminish the
lady's triumph. Had a gentleman made the boast his lordship would
have demonstrated that it was hardly more than eleven.

"I timed it accurately from the moment he went away," said the lady,
"and it was exactly fifty-seven minutes. The first part of it was
awfully fast. Then we