his ears this morning in but a brief space. Hearing it in spite of
himself, his blood grew hot and his horse began to paw the earth, he,
in his irritation, having unknowingly fretted its mouth. And then one
of the company, an elderly sportsman with a watery eye, began a story.

"Good God!" Roxholm broke forth to the man nearest to him, one not of
the party, but evidently one who found it diverting; "good God! Can
they not restrain themselves before a child? Let them be decent for his
mere youth's sake! The lad is not thirteen."

The man started and stared at him a moment with open mouth, and then
burst into a loud guffaw of laughter.

"The lad!" he cried, roaring and slapping his thigh in his mirth. "'Tis
no lad. Didst take it for one? Lord! 'tis Jeoff Wildair's youngest
wench. 'Tis Clo--'tis Clo, man. All the county knows the vixen!"

And at that very instant the hounds sprang forth, giving tongue, and
the field sprang forward with them, and all was wild excitement: cries
of "Tally ho!" ringing, horses plunging, red coats seeming to fly
through the air; and my lord Marquess went with the field, his cheek
hot, his heart suddenly thumping in his breast with a sense of he knew
not what, as his eye, following a slender, scarlet-coated figure, saw
it lift its horse for a huge leap over a five-barred gate, take it like
a bird, and lead the whole scurrying, galloping multitude.


"Yes," said my Lord Dunstanwolde, as they rode homeward slowly in the
evening gray, "'tis the girl infant who was found struggling and
shrieking beneath the dead body of her mother, and till to-day I never