This animal, who followed uncle Tom whithersoever he went, came skurrying out of the stables as the dog-cart drove off, and joined in the general scamper.

Perhaps the dogs may have been too much for Clochette’s nerves, or perhaps the effort of behaving well as far as the park gates with those horrible wheels rattling behind her was as much as any hunter born and bred could be expected to do, or perhaps uncle Tom was too free with that whip with which he caressed her shining flanks; but be that as it may, no sooner was Clochette’s head well turned along the straight high-road with its high-tangled hedge-rows on either side than she began to show symptoms of behaving very badly indeed.  She bucked and pranced, and stood on her hind legs; she whipped suddenly round, pirouetted upon her own axis with the dexterity of a circus performer, and demonstrated very plainly that, if she only dared, she would like to take to her heels in the reverse direction to that which her driver desired her to go.

All this was, however, equally delightful and exciting both to Tom Esterworth and his niece.  There was no apprehension in Beatrice’s mind, for her uncle drove as well as he rode, and she felt perfectly secure in the strong, supple hands that guided Clochette’s erratic movements.

“There is not a kick in her,” uncle Tom had said, as they started, and he repeated the observation now; and kicking being out of the category of Clochette’s iniquities, there was nothing else to fear.

No sooner, however, had the words left his lips than a turn of the road brought them within sight of a great volume of black smoke rushing slowly but surely towards them; whilst a horrible roaring and howling, as of an antediluvian monster in its wrath, filled the silence of the summer afternoon with a hideous and unholy confusion.

Talk about there being no wild animals in our peaceful land!  What could have been the Megatherium and the Ichthyosaurus, and all the fire-spitting dragons of antiquity compared to the traction engines of the nineteenth century?

“It’s a steam plough!” ejaculated Beatrice, below her breath.

“D——­n!” cried her uncle, not at all below his breath.

As to Clochette, she stood for an instant stock still, with her ears pricked and her head well up, facing the horrors of her situation; next she gave an angry snort as though to say, “No! this is too much!” Then she turned short round and began a series of peculiar bounds and plunges, accompanied by an ominous uplifting of her hind quarters, which had plainly but one object in view—­the correct conjugation of the verb active “to kick.”

There was a crunching of woodwork, a cracking as of iron hoofs against the splash-board.  Beatrice instinctively put up her hands before her face, but she did not utter a sound.

“Do you think you could get down, Pussy, and go to her head?”

“Shall I hold the reins, uncle?”