Not many days after, Katherine and her mother set forth upon their travels, leaving nothing they regretted save the two little boys, respecting whose fate Katherine felt anything but satisfied.  Of this she said nothing to her mother.  And so, with temporary forgetfulness of the deed which was destined to color her whole life, she saw the curtain fall on the first act of her story.

CHAPTER XI.

“A NEW PHASE.”

“An interval of three weeks—­six months—­ten years,” as the case may be—­“is supposed to have elapsed since the last act.”  This is a very commonly used expression in play-bills, and there seems no just cause or impediment why a story-teller should not avail himself of the same device to waft the patient reader over an uneventful period, during which the hero or heroine has been granted a “breathing space” between the ebb and flow of harrowing adventures and moving incidents.

It was, then, more than two years since the last chapter, and a still cold day at the end of February—­still and somewhat damp—­in one of the midland shires—­say Clayshire.  The dank hedges and sodden fields had a melancholy aspect, which seemed to affect a couple of horsemen who were walking their jaded, much-splashed horses along a narrow road, or rather lane, which led between a stretch of pasture-land on one side and a ploughed field on the other.  The red coats and top-boots of both were liberally besprinkled with mud; even their hats had not quite escaped.  Their steeds hung their heads and moved languidly; both horses and riders had evidently had a hard day’s work.  Presently the road sloped somewhat steeply to a hollow sheltered at one side by a steep bank overgrown with brushwood and large trees.  The country behind the huntsmen was rather flat and very open, but from this point it became broken and wooded, sloping gradually up toward a distant range of low blue hills.

“Ha, you blundering idiot!” exclaimed the elder of the two men, pulling up his horse, a powerful roan, as he stumbled at the beginning of the descent.  He was a big, heavy man with a red face, thick gray mustache, and small, angry-looking eyes.  “He’ll break my neck some day.”

“Don’t take away his character,” returned his companion, laughing.  “Remember he has had a hard run, and you are not a feather-weight.”  The speaker was tall (judging from the length of the well-shaped leg which lay close against his horse’s side), large-framed, and bony; his plain strong face was tanned to swarthiness by exposure to wind and weather; moreover, a pair of deep-set dark eyes and long, nearly black mustache showed that he had been no fair, ruddy youth to begin with.

“No, by Jove!” exclaimed the first speaker.  “I don’t understand how it is that I grow so infernally stout.  I am sure I take exercise enough, and live most temperately.”

“Exercise!  Yes, for five or six months; the rest of the twelve you do nothing.  And as to living temperately, what with a solid breakfast, a heavy luncheon, and a serious dinner, you manage to consume a great deal in the twenty-four hours.”