“Besides being as slow as molasses, he’s a balker, as well,” he muttered, and, taking his whip well in hand, he began to lash the tired beast most inhumanly, a fierce imprecation accompanying each cut of the lash. One, two, three, four, five strokes of the sizzling rawhide had been brought down upon the quivering flank of the animal, when, forth from the branches of the tree overhead, a blow from a twig fell full upon the face of the startled horseman, a small brown hand was thrust down from among the green branches and a shrill, girlish voice cried, while the blows were rained down faster and faster upon the head of the young man, who was too astounded to make the slightest defense, or make a retreat: “Take that, and that, and that! you outrageous monster, for lashing a poor, defenseless horse. Oh, I hope that I have hurt you as much as you hurt him--so there!” each word being accompanied by a whack from the stinging twig. Ray Challoner looked up, as well as his amazement would permit, and saw overhead, sitting on a broad bough, a girl, and surely the angriest creature that he had ever beheld, gazing down at him. Even in that moment, as he began to dodge the blows, he could not help but notice that the elfish, gypsyish-looking girl had a fine pair of dark eyes, even though they were at that moment blazing with passion, and that the head, crowned with a mass of dark curls, was well set and dainty, the lips were scarlet and curved like Cupid’s bow, and the brune face like a picture he had once seen in a foreign art gallery, of a Spanish princess--though, instead of the filmy lace dress of the former, this one wore a brown linsey dress, which made no pretense of covering the brown feet and ankles dangling down from it. Challoner recovered his usual coolness instantly. “Ah!” he said, backing away from the reach of that strong, belligerent young arm, that could deal such tremendous blows with the twig, “my assailant is a young girl, it would seem; therefore I am unable to defend myself from this uncalled-for attack.” “Uncalled for!” exclaimed the girl, still more shrilly, for she was thoroughly angry at the stranger; “you provoked it by cruelly abusing your poor horse; I only wish he had reared and thrown you, as you deserved.” “Thank you,” remarked Challoner, sneeringly and mockingly, but before he could utter the rest of the sentence which was on his lips, the horse, as though he had heard the suggestion and thought the idea a capital one, immediately reared backward with the quickness of motion that unseated his rider in a single instant, and in the next, Raymond Challoner found himself measuring his full length on the greensward, and the animal, freed from his obnoxious rider, had plunged forward into an adjacent thicket, and was lost to view. CHAPTER XII. “WHO IS JESS?”