A SHARP BUKST AND A HARD RUN. 105 



and Campbell of Sacldell. The weight of Val. Magher, 

 and his hard pounding had told the tale and he was 

 tailing. Goodricke, though riding game, had not yet 

 made his loss good, though he was up with the McDo- 

 nalds, the Gascoignes, Oliver, Ciss Forrester, and 

 Henry Peyton, who were doing all that could be done 

 to retrieve the time lost at the first gate, and who, 

 though far behind, were still in the same field with the 

 hounds. 



On they went, faster, and yet faster — or it seemed 

 that they went faster as the stride of the good horses 

 gradually shortened. Fields flitted by unseen, fences ' 

 were topped unnoticed, and by this time the Virginian 

 blood of Fairfax, never the coldest in the world, was 

 getting up ; and as he saw that the viscount was mak- 

 ing a dead set at him, like a true Virginian, he met 

 him half way — and so by this time they had admitted 

 to themselves, what all the field who were within eye- 

 shot had seen the last half hour, that they were riding 

 no less at one another than to the hounds. 



Together they plunged through a crashing bull- 

 finch, so stout, that had they been going one iota 

 slower, it would have hurled them backward, into a 

 good grass-field of about twenty acres, falling away 

 from them a little, and bounded on the farther side, 

 by the brimming bankfuU Whissendine, the broadest 

 jumpahle brook in England, now slightly overflowed, 

 and running with a furious current. 



" Have at you now," cried Jardinier, forgetful in 

 his impetuosity of the laws of conventional courtesy, 

 and he pointed with his whip ahead, then rushed the 

 Smolensko at it. At that very moment Fairfax took 

 a pull on Moonbeam, and dropped two horse's lengths 

 at least astern of Jardinier. The viscount thought his 

 heart had failed him, and that he would blink his pace, 

 and rode yet more fiercely forward. It was his tem- 

 per not his judgment, that so swayed him; for no man 



