young Stoutheart, pointing to the footman
referred to.

"No, thank you," said Queeker. "Will you?"

"No. I have quite enough of spirit within me. Don't require artificial
stimulant," said the youth with a laugh. "Come now--we're off."

Queeker's heart gave a bound as he observed the master of the hounds
ride off at a brisk pace followed by the whole field.

"I won't die yet. It's too soon," he thought, as he shook the reins and
chirped to his steed.

Slapover did not require chirping. He shook his head, executed a mild
pirouette on his left hind leg, and made a plunge which threatened first
to leave his rider behind, and then to shoot him over his head. Queeker
had been taken unawares, but he pressed his knees together, knitted his
brows, and resolved not to be so taken again.

Whew! what a rush there was as the two or three hundred excited steeds
and enthusiastic riders crossed the lawn, galloped through an open gate,
and made towards a piece of rough ground covered with low bushes and
bracken, through which the hounds were seen actively running as if in
search of something. The bodies of the hounds were almost hidden, and
Queeker, whose chief attention was devoted to his horse, had only time
to receive the vague impression, as he galloped up, that the place was
alive with white and pointed tails.

That first rush scattered Queeker's depression to the winds. What cared
he for love, either successful or unrequited, now? Katie was forgotten.
Fanny was to him little better than a mere abstraction. He was on a
hunter! He was following the hounds! He had heard, or imagined he had
heard, something like a horn. He was surprised a little that no one
cried out "Tally-ho!" and in the wild excitement of his feelings thought
of venturing on it himself, but the necessity of holding in Slapover
with all the power of his arms, fortunately induced him to restrain his
ardour.

Soon after he heard a shout of some sort, which he tried to believe was
"Tally-ho!" and the scattered huntsmen, who had been galloping about in
all directions, converged into a stream. Following, he knew not and
cared not what or whom, he swept round the margin of a little pond, and
dashed over a neighbouring field.

From that point Queeker's recollection of events became a train of
general confusion, with lucid points at intervals, where incidents of
unusual interest or force arrested his attention.

The first of these lucid points wa