Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/90

 They put on all the pace they could, but only to hear the distant music of the hounds, and now and then see over intervening hedges the head and shoulders of the solitary rider flying along with them.

Lesbia’s initiation into hunting had not been all smooth, but she had now the very cream of the sport, and no longer felt any pain in her swollen upper lip and nose, The fox could not have taken a better line of country, mainly grass pastures with a plough, stubble, or turnip at intervals; and us she crossed them at a swinging gallop, with plenty of time to take a pull at every fence, now a trim quickset in and out of a road, now a succession of common hedges with double ditch, now a bullfinch twelve or fifteen feet high, which the strong mare cleft as if it were a paper-hoop, now and then a stile where the hedge was impracticable, and two or three locked five-barred gates, over which she rose with an easy lift, the young girl experienced a physical exhilaration beyond what she had known before, as also a feeling of triumph at having shown her new style of horseback to advantage by distancing the field.

Presently the ground began to rise, and on passing the crest and beginning to descend, a wide grass valley opened before her, along the middle of which was visible that ominous line of pollard willows which makes many a straight-going man reconsider his position. But Lesbia had no hesitation about her now, and as she sailed away by the chorusing pack, her only thought was whether she could jump or would have to swim. As the gleam of the brook came in sight, she pulled up for a few seconds to choose her place, then, sitting well down in the saddle, let the mare rush. A powerful effort, and some twenty feet of water swept away behind her, the edge of the bank breaking where she landed, and causing a struggle but no fall. Half the pack was still swimming the stream whilst she galloped, standing in stirrups,