Whatever she might have felt about the approaching departure of Colonel
Dashwood certainly did not appear, for Kate was in glorious spirits,--her
pretty figure, always well on horseback, set off still more by the
elastic action of her beautiful dark chestnut.

Where is the thorough-bred without "opinions?"--and when of that
excitable colour, you may generally reckon on a handful! "Childe Harold"
was vexed at galloping on a different strip of turf to his companions,
and delivered himself of seven buck-jumps successively. Kate, quite at
her ease, was repressing his efforts to get his head down, with the same
smile on her face that some absurdity of Harry's had provoked; but just
as she began to tire a bit, and fancy her hat was loosening, "Childe
Harold," who might then, perhaps, have had one conquering buck, as
suddenly gave it up, in the fatuous way a horse will, when he is nearest
success, if he only knew it.

"Two or three of those would have settled me," said Harry,
good-humouredly coming to her side. "What an ass a fellow looks
who can't ride!"

"Well, I will say for you you don't funk," said Kate consolingly; "and I
suppose all sailors ride like monkeys.--There are the hounds going on; we
are only just in time."

Coquettish Kate was soon surrounded. If she rode fair and didn't
cross men at their fences, still less did she want assistance at any
practicable leap. "Childe Harold," too, was indifferent to a lead; so,
beholden to none, she rode her own line, and, with her merry smile
and gay tongue, with the whole field, from the gallant master to the
hard-riding farmer, there were few greater favourites than Harry's cousin
Kate.

The universal theme at the cover-side was, of course, the declaration of
war; but even that absorbing subject sunk to silence as the first low
whimper, taken up more confidently by hound after hound, proclaimed that
poor Reynard was being bustled through the underwood.

A relieved smile played over the features of the owner of the cover, and
"Always a fox in Beechwood" came approvingly from the master's lips as he
crashed out of the spinny. Kate's gauntleted hand was held up warningly,
for the "Childe" was apt to let out one hind leg in excitement. Then
there was a screech from an urchin in a tree, and they were away with a
straight running fox pointing to Redbank Bushes, eight miles off as the
crow flies.

Not much of the run was Harry Dutton destined to see that day; his
presume