And then Frances forgot everything. She was driving down the roadless hillside swift as the wind. The trap lurched to right to left. The wind cut her cheek. Horsemen dashed past. The hounds were almost underfoot, running straight; the chorus of their voices filled all the echoing valley. The stream was crossed with a swift splash. The nag ahead was running straight up-hill and Starlight was following. The wheels struck a rock and jolted her to her knees; she slid back on the seat again. The riders were in the woods now, but their course lay straight as the road ran. Fences and woods and fields of stacked corn and wayside cabins slid past, but they kept the pace. Then Starlight went more slowly, the heavy trap was telling on him; the gray nag and her driver were nearly out of sight, the driver waving an impatient hand at the loiterer as he sped around the last turning. Worse too, the baying was growing less and less distinct; she urged Starlight on. He gave a burst of speed, the wheels went rolling over a rock, and in a breath the trap was going down--down--and Frances rolled quite easily into the dry ditch. For a moment she lay still, dazed. She watched the deep, intense, blue of the sky overhead and the screen of oak branches against it and the buzzards floating lazily high up in ether. She stretched her limbs and found them unhurt, and then she turned her head on her arm. "Father will never let me go again!" she moaned. She got to her feet. "I wonder what is the matter, anyway!" she muttered; but the trouble was easy enough to see. The violent wrench had turned the wheel inside out and broken every spoke off short at the hub. Starlight, head turned, was looking behind him reproachfully. "Turn your head, you old goose; it isn't my fault either!" she vowed to the woods and the fallen leaves and the empty road. "That man at the stables hasn't been washing the wheels as he should; he's let them get too dry!" But it was useless to patch up any such excuse as this even to herself; she knew quite well it was her own reckless driving that did it and she knew there was a scene with her father ahead; but she set her lips firmly and turned to the work in hand. She got the trap as best she could out of the road, she unharnessed Starlight and flung the black rug upon his back. "I suppose I will have to ride you home so-- My soul!" She jumped a foot. A little creature running swiftly down the fence rails, sprang to the ground just ahead of her and flashed into the woods. It was a full second before she knew what it meant. Then she heard the baying of the dogs.