and a half concentrated in his head, when suddenly a tall grassy bank confronted him, with, as he perceived with horror, a ditch in front of it.  He tried to swerve, but there seemed something irrevocable about the way in which the bank faced him, and if his method of “changing feet” was not strictly conventional, he achieved the main point and found all four safely under him when he landed, which was as much—­if not more than as much—­as either he or Muriel expected.  The Miss Purcells were a practical people, and were thankful for minor mercies.

It was at about this point that the stranger on the hireling drew level; he had not been at the meet, and Muriel turned her head to see who it was that was kicking old McConnell’s screw along so well.  He lifted his cap, but he was certainly a stranger.  She saw a discreetly clipped and pointed brown beard, with a rather long and curling moustache.

“Fed on furze!” thought Muriel, with a remembrance of the foxy mare’s upper lip when she came in “off the hill”.

Then she met the strange man’s eyes—­was he quite a stranger?  What was it about the greeny-grey gleam of them that made her heart give a curious lift, and then sent the colour running from it to her face and back again to her heart?

“I thought you were going to cut me—­Muriel!” said the strange man.

In the meantime the five couple and Carnage were screaming down the heathery side of Liss Cranny Hill, on a scent that was a real comfort to them after nearly five miserable months of kennels and road-work, and a glorious wind under their sterns.  Jerry, the Whip, was riding like a madman to stop them; they knew that well, and went the faster for it.  Sir Thomas was blowing his horn inside out.  But Jerry was four fields behind, and Sir Thomas was on the wrong side of the wood, and Miss Muriel and the strange gentleman were coming on for all they were worth, and were as obviously bent on having a good time as they were.  Carnage flung up her handsome head and squealed with pure joy, as she pitched herself over the big bounds fence at the foot of the hill, and flopped across the squashy ditch on the far side.  There was grass under her now, beautiful firm dairy grass, and that entrancing perfume was lying on it as thick as butter—­Oh! it was well to be hunting! thought Carnage, with another most childish shriek, legging it after her father and mother and several other blood relations in a way that did Muriel’s heart good to see.

The fox, as good luck would have it, had chosen the very pick of Sir Thomas’s country, and Muriel and the stranger had it all to themselves.  She looked over her shoulder.  Away back in a half-dug potato field Nora and a knot of labourers were engaged in bitter conflict with the foxy mare on the subject of a bank with a rivulet in front of it.  To refuse to jump running water had been from girlhood the resolve of the foxy mare; it was plain that neither Nora’s