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After supper our spirited old host gave the hour of muster for five o'clock A.M., and we severally sought our beds in order to make the most of the brief time left for sleep. Much as I love a fox-hunt, I freely confess that this early rising did seem a mighty hard bargain. 28th.

Hammond had chosen, I might have taken the subject into my consideration. Mary flamed crimson. 'Mr. Hammond never gave me a thought, she said, 'unless it was to think me contemptible. He is worlds too good for such a Tomboy. Maulevrier told him about the fox-hunt, and they both laughed at me at least I have no doubt Mr. Hammond laughed, though I was too much ashamed to look at him.

He and she rode in together as modern men and women ride through a gate to the covert side at a fox-hunt. They chatted and laughed together, and their horses pranced, responding to the humor of their riders.

George and Harry, as usual, agreed to accompany them part of the way, and, when they reached the door, what was their surprise to find the ground white with snow, and the air filled with the rapidly-falling flakes. "We'll have that fox-hunt to-morrow," exclaimed Harry, in delight. "Of course we will," said Archie, "and I wouldn't take ten dollars for my chance of catching one."

She had abased herself in the dust before God she had offered all her life to Him if He would spare her child and had He not answered? Might not Harry's illness, indeed, have been sent to punish her for her neglect? A shudder of abhorrence passed through her as she remembered the fox-hunt, and her passion of jealousy.

Mary had not forgotten that unlucky story about the fox-hunt, and ever since Hammond's return she had been as it were on her best behaviour, refraining from her races with the terriers, and holding herself aloof from Maulevrier's masculine pursuits. She sheltered herself a good deal under the Fräulein's substantial wing, and took care never to intrude herself upon the amusements of her brother and his friend. She was not one of those young women who think a brother's presence an excuse for a perpetual tête-

Nothing happens; that is, nobody murders or debauches anybody else; there is no arson or pillage of any sort; there is not a ghost, or a ravening beast, or a hair-breadth escape, or a shipwreck, or a monster of self-sacrifice, or a lady five thousand years old in the whole story; "no promenade, no band of music, nossing!" as Mr. Du Maurier's Frenchman said of the meet for a fox-hunt.

The two young cousins, Ribaumont and D'Aubepine, were chiefly engaged in looking out for sport, setting their horses to race with one another, and the like, in which Charles Archfield sometimes took a share, but he usually rode with the two young ladies, and talked to them very pleasantly of his travels in Italy, the pictures and antiquities which had made into an interesting reality the studies that he had hated when a boy, also the condition of the country he had seen with a mind which seemed to have opened and enlarged with a sudden start beyond the interests of the next fox-hunt or game at bowls.

She had a faint hope that by this essentially feminine apparel she might lessen the prejudicial effect of Maulevrier's cruel story about the fox-hunt. Mr. Hammond answered absently, hardly looking at Mary, and quite unconscious of her pretty gown.

In addition to this, however, hounds having to smell as they go, cannot travel at the ultra steeple-chase pace, so opposed to 'looking before you leap, and so conducive to danger and difficulty, and as going even at a fair pace depends upon the state of the atmosphere, and the scent the fox leaves behind, it is evident that where mere daring hard riding is the object, a fox-hunt cannot be depended upon for furnishing the necessary accommodation.