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118 PART III.

LEAPING

pleasant winter afternoon a fashionably dressed young man, crop in hand, spur on heel, and mounted on a tall horse, was seen to emerge briskly from a little grove in a gentleman's place, and come to a sudden halt in the level field across which he had intended to gallop. The cause was a new ditch, deep though narrow, stretching across from fence to fence before him. He looked at the obstacle a moment, then up and down the field, and remarked to a gardener, an old Scotchman, who stood looking on, spade in hand, "Well, I suppose I must go back." "I suppose so," said the old fellow, dryly, looking up out of the corner of his eye with an almost imperceptible smile. The young man reddened, hesitated, and then turned away, saying, as if the other's thoughts had been spoken out, "To tell the truth, I don't know whether my horse would if he could, nor whether he could if he would." "An' the same o' yourself," muttered the old man in his grizzled beard. The sarcasm was not to be wondered at, as the speaker remembered what he had many a time seen, and very