72 TEE SILVER FOX 



at a promising place in the fence, she 

 bundled over it with an agility for which 

 no one would have given her credit, and 

 Slaney found herself galloping alone behind 

 the racing pack. 



The fox had done all that was most un- 

 expected, had gone away into the teeth of 

 the wind, in a direction wide of any known 

 destination, and the field, both horse and 

 foot, were all left at the wrong side of the 

 big irregular covert. Yet Slaney had not 

 gone a hundred yards when Lady Susan 

 and Glasgow were behind her like a storm, 

 and shot past with their horses pulling in 

 the wildness of a first burst. The next 

 fence was a towering bank, wet and rotten 

 and blind with briars, feasible only at a 

 spot where a breach made for cattle had 

 been built up with loose stones. Glasgow 

 came first at it, checking his young horse's 

 ingenuous desire to buck, and sitting down 

 for a big fly. He was suddenly confronted 

 by Tom Quin at the far side, brandishing a 

 stone as big as a turnip as if in the act to 



