Christian rode past the long ivy-covered lace of the house, that stared at her with the wall-eyed glare of shuttered windows, and down the long avenue, that curved submissive to the windings of the Onwashee, now black and brimming after a week of rain.  Young cattle, that had slept, according to their custom, on the roadway, scrambled up as she came near, and crashed away through the evergreens, whose bared lower branches bore witness to their depredations.  They were a sight hateful to Christian, who, in spite of her resignation to the methods of her groom, cherished a regard for tidiness that she had often found was more trouble than it was worth.

She let Nancy, the chestnut mare, have her head, a privilege that made short work of the remaining half-mile of avenue, and soon the stones and mud of the high road were flying behind her, as the little mare, snatching at her bridle, and neglecting no opportunity for a shy, fretted on towards the sunrise, and the covert that lay, purple, on a long hill, three miles away.

Bill Kirby’s foible was not punctuality; when Christian arrived at the appointed cross-roads in the middle of Nad Wood she found a patient little group of three or four men, farmers, all of them, she thought, waiting under the dewy branches of the beeches for the arrival of the hounds.  One of them rode quickly from the group to meet her.  A young man, with a slight figure and square shoulders, who was riding a long-legged bay horse, that, like its rider, was unknown to Christian.  The light under the beech trees was dim and green, and such faint illumination as the grey and quiet sky afforded, was coming, like this rider, to meet Christian.  He was close to her before he spoke, then he caught his cap off his head and waved it, and shouted:  “Hurrah, Christian!  Here I am!  Home again!  Don’t pretend you never saw me before, because I won’t stand swagger from you!”

“Larry!  Not you?  Not really?”

He had her hand by this time, and was shaking it wildly despite the resentment of the chestnut mare, at the sudden proximity of the bay horse.

“Yes!  Me all right! Moi qui vous parle—­as we say in French Paris!  I only got home last night.  I bought this chap at Sewell’s on my way through.  He’s a County Limerick horse.  I bet he’s a goer!  How do you like him?”

It was like Larry to require, instantly, praise and recognition for his new purchase, but Christian wasn’t thinking of the horse.  Her wide, clear eyes were fixed on his rider, her mind was a hustle of questions.

Had he changed?  Would he stay?  Did he know that he was “in black books” with her father?  Would he care if he did know?  What ages it seemed—!  Four years, wasn’t it?  Her brain was working too hard to remember, but she certainly remembered that he had not had a moustache when he was last at home; such a fanciful little French scrap of a moustache as it was too, made of pure gold!