Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/89

 enough to be passed without a certainty of staking the horses.

Meanwhile Lesbia, not in the line of the pack, but a good many yards on one side—a rule of riding her uncle had carefully impressed on her—was steering cheerfully for a place of a very different sort. It was a gap in the high top of the stake-and-bind, barred across by a quite new timber railing. She felt a little trepidation during the short breathing-time afforded while the hounds were climbing the high and difficult fence; but her mare was already pricking her ears and shortening under her in that peculiar bucking whereby a good hunter seems to convey to his rider, ‘I can do it, if you'll let me.’ A bold horse makes more than half the boldness of the rider; Lesbia took her decision at once, kept her shoulders down, elbows in, head erect and knees well closed on the saddle, as the mare charged the formidable place. A violent spring that tried her seat, a splintering crash under her, a deep swoop down, and she was striding away over the ridge and furrow, alongside of the pack, and alone, not having even slipped a stirrup.

‘Criky!’ exclaimed the master, whose attention had been diverted from his accursed hurdle by curiosity as to what Lesbia meant to do; ‘that was an ugly one, and no mistake. Who’s that lad, d’ye know, Miller?’

‘It’s not a lad, Sir Richard, it’s a young lady,’ gasped the huntsman as, very red and hot, he scrambled back and caught his bridle.

‘A girl! the devil—you don’t mean to say so! I never saw anything like it. We sha’n't catch her now; they’re going like smoke.’

The huntsman then put his horse at the gap, knocking out two of the pointed stakes in his passage; the master followed, and Miss Blemmyketts was the first after him.