He was tempted to say he was ill in the morning—­which was, considering his state of mind, more or less true—­but concluded that, as he would have to ride sooner or later during his visit, and that if he did break his neck it would be in a good cause, he determined to do his best.  He did not want to ride at all, for two excellent reasons—­first, because he wanted to live for Miss Paddock’s sake, and, second, because he wanted to live for his own.

The next morning was a most forbidding and doleful-looking morning, and young Travers had great hopes that the meet would be declared off; but, just as he lay in doubt, the servant knocked at his door with his riding things and his hot water.

He came down-stairs looking very miserable indeed.  Satan had been taken to the place where they were to meet, and Travers viewed him on his arrival there with a sickening sense of fear as he saw him pulling three grooms off their feet.

Travers decided that he would stay with his feet on solid earth just as long as he could, and when the hounds were thrown off and the rest had started at a gallop he waited, under the pretence of adjusting his gaiters, until they were all well away.  Then he clenched his teeth, crammed his hat down over his ears, and scrambled up on to the saddle.  His feet fell quite by accident into the stirrups, and the next instant he was off after the others, with an indistinct feeling that he was on a locomotive that was jumping the ties.  Satan was in among and had passed the other horses in less than five minutes, and was so close on the hounds that the whippers-in gave a cry of warning.  But Travers could as soon have pulled a boat back from going over the Niagara Falls as Satan, and it was only because the hounds were well ahead that saved them from having Satan ride them down.  Travers had taken hold of the saddle with his left hand to keep himself down, and sawed and swayed on the reins with his right.  He shut his eyes whenever Satan jumped, and never knew how he happened to stick on; but he did stick on, and was so far ahead that no one could see in the misty morning just how badly he rode.  As it was, for daring and speed he led the field, and not even young Paddock was near him from the start.  There was a broad stream in front of him, and a hill just on its other side.  No one had ever tried to take this at a jump.  It was considered more of a swim than anything else, and the hunters always crossed it by the bridge, towards the left.  Travers saw the bridge and tried to jerk Satan’s head in that direction; but Satan kept right on as straight as an express train over the prairie.  Fences and trees and furrows passed by and under Travers like a panorama run by electricity, and he only breathed by accident.  They went on at the stream and the hill beyond as though they were riding at a stretch of turf, and, though the whole field set up a shout of warning and dismay, Travers could only gasp and shut his eyes.  He remembered the fate of the