erely holding their extreme ends, settled himself comfortably
in his saddle, leaning well back, and turning round laughingly to
me, observed, "Aren't you coming?" "Oh, not there," I cried in true
melo-dramatic tones of horror; but it was all in vain, F---- merely
remarked "You have nothing to do but fancy you are sitting in an
arm-chair at home, you are quite as safe." "What nonsense," I gasped. "I
only wish I _was_ at home: never, never will I come out riding again."
All this time the leading horse was slowly and carefully edging himself
down hill a few steps to the right, then a few to the left, just as he
thought best, displacing tons of loose stone and even small rocks
at every movement. Helen, nothing daunted, was eager to follow, and
although she quivered with excitement at the noise, echoed back from the
opposite hills, lost no time in preparing to descend. Her first movement
sent such showers of rubble down upon F---- and his horse, that I really
thought the latter would have been knocked off his legs. "If you _could_
keep a little more to the right, so as to send the stones clear of me,
I should be very grateful," shouted F----, who was actually near the
bottom of the hill already, so sharp had been the angles of his horse's
descent. I felt afraid of attempting to guide Helen, lest the least
check should send us both head over heels into the quagmire below, and
yet it seemed dreadful to cause the death of one's husband by rolling
down cart loads of stones upon him. It could not have been more than
five minutes before Helen and I stood side by side with Leo, on the only
bit of firm ground at the edge of the morass. I believe I was as white
as my pocket handkerchief; and if fright could turn a person's hair
grey, I had been sufficiently alarmed to make myself eligible for any
quantity of walnut pomade.

Fortunately the summer had proved rather a dry one, and the swamp was
not so wet as it would have been after a heavy rain-fall. The horses
stepped carefully from flax bushes to "nigger heads" (as the very old
blackened grass stumps are called), resting hardly a moment anywhere,
and avoiding all the most seductive looking spots. I thought my
companion must have gone suddenly mad, when, a hawk rising up almost
from beneath our horses' feet, he flung himself off his saddle and cried
out, "A late hawk's nest, I declare!" And so it proved, for a little
searching in a sheltered and tolerably dry spot revealed a couple of