158 A BREAKFAST, AND — BUOKEN BONES. 



■will have a fair start yet. Two ponies to your one, 

 Jardinicr, that he beats you again to-day." 



"Done I" roared the peer, " I'll kill him and my- 

 self too, first," and down came his whip-stock like a 

 sabre-cut on "Merlin's" flank, and away he w^ent 

 abreast of the first hound that broke covert, amid a 

 volley of oaths from the squire, and the cui'ses, deep 

 not loud, of the whole field. 



" I hope hell kill you ; and I think he will," said 

 the Russian to himself, in hard, cold earnest, and fol- 

 lowed at a more reasonable, though still a slashing 

 pace. So stood affairs as they two awoke from their 

 day-dream. 



" They actually have found, in Rcarsby w^ood. Miss 

 Morton." 



"Actually, they have," she replied, with an arch 

 smile, " and we have the luck of the turn. Colonel. 

 A little more to the left. Now, Bonnibelle, good girl," 

 and with the words she gave her bridle rein a shake, 

 and, like a swan in the air or a ship on the sea, they 

 swept, graceful girl and graceful mare, down the gen- 

 tle declivity ; Fairfax followed, scarce half a length 

 behind. 



The Colonel and his elle^ as Matuschevitz had mis- 

 chievously termed her to plague Jardinier, on the left, 

 the fox, the pack, and the field on the right, riding on 

 two converging lines which would meet if produced at 

 the osier holt. But the line of our friends, who were 

 already nearer to the fox than were the hounds them- 

 selves, was so much shorter than the other that it was 

 only necessary for them to maintain a good hard gal- 

 lop in order to nick the field at the brook-, and then 

 fresh horses against blown ones, ho ! 



The grass-land, so far, was firm, level, and unbroken 

 by furrow or molehill, and Mary Merton kept her 

 hands well down, and her rein slack, yet on a pull, and 

 gallopped. 



