sses of the wood,
Bullfinch and Mosstrooper following meekly.

They went a wonderful round, winding in and out of Bratley Wood,
piercing deep into the wintry glories of Mark Ash; through mud and moss
and soft pitfalls, where the horses sank up to their hocks in withered
leaves; avoiding bogs by a margin of a yard or so; up and down, under
spreading branches, where the cattle line but just cleared the heads of
the riders; across the blackened bracken; by shining hollies, whose
silvery trunks stood up like obelisks out of a thicket of dwarf bushes:
through groves, where the tall beech-trunks had a solemn look like the
columns of some gigantic temple; then into wondrous plantations of
Scotch firs, where the air was balmy as in summer, and no breath of the
December wind penetrated the dense wall of foliage. Then to higher
ground, where the wintry air blew keen again, and where there were a
soft green lawn, studded with graceful conifers--cypress, deodora,
Douglas fir--tall with a growth of thirty years; the elegant
importations of an advanced civilisation. Anon by the gray lichened
walls of a deserted garden, which had a strangely-romantic look, and
was as suggestive of a dreamy idyllic world as a poem by Tennyson; and
so down into the green-and-gray depths of Mark Ash again, but never
returning over the same ground; and then up the hill to Vinny Ridge and
the Heronry, where Captain Winstanley cracked his whip to scare the
herons, and had the satisfaction of scaring his own and the other two
horses, while the herons laughed him to scorn from their cradles in the
tree-tops, and would not stir a feather for his gratification. Then by
a long plantation to a wild stretch of common, where Vixen told her
companions that they were safe for a good while, and set them an
example by starting Arion across the short smooth turf at a
hand-gallop. They pulled up just in time to escape a small gulf of moss
and general sponginess, waded a stream or two, splashed through a good
deal of spewy ground, and came to Queen's Bower; thence into the oak
plantations of New Park; then across Gretnam Wood; and then at a smart
trot along the road towards home.

"I hope I haven't kept you out too long?" said Vixen politely.

"We've only been five hours," answered the Captain with grim civility;
"but if Mallow is not tired, I shall not complain."

"I never enjoyed anything so much in my life, never," protested Lord
Mallow.

"Well, to-morrow we can