“I thought you always followed the hounds,” said Miss Dashwood, timidly. “Oh, to be sure we do, in any common country, but here it is out of the question; the fences are too large for any one, and if I am not mistaken, these gentlemen will not ride far over this. There, look yonder, where the river is rushing down the hill: that stream, widening as it advances, crosses the cover nearly midway,--well, they must clear that; and then you may see these walls of large loose stones nearly five feet in height. That is the usual course the fox takes, unless he heads towards the hills and goes towards Dangan, and then there’s an end of it; for the deer-park wall is usually a pull up to every one except, perhaps, to our friend Charley yonder, who has tried his fortune against drowning more than once there.” “Look, here he comes,” said Matthew Blake, “and looking splendidly too,--a little too much in flesh perhaps, if anything.” “Captain Hammersley!” said the four Miss Blakes, in a breath. “Where is he?” “No; it’s the Badger I’m speaking of,” said Matthew, laughing, and pointing with his finger towards a corner of the field where my servant was leisurely throwing down a wall about two feet high to let him pass. “Oh, how handsome! What a charger for a dragoon!” said Miss Dashwood. Any other mode of praising my steed would have been much more acceptable. The word “dragoon” was a thorn in my tenderest part that rankled and lacerated at every stir. In a moment I was in the saddle, and scarcely seated when at once all the _mauvais honte_ of boyhood left me, and I felt every inch a man. I often look back to that moment of my life, and comparing it with similar ones, cannot help acknowledging how purely is the self-possession which so often wins success the result of some slight and trivial association. My confidence in my horsemanship suggested moral courage of a very different kind; and I felt that Charles O’Malley curvetting upon a thorough-bred, and the same man ambling upon a shelty, were two and very dissimilar individuals. “No chance of the captain,” said Matthew, who had returned from a _reconnaissance_ upon the road; “and after all it’s a pity, for the day is getting quite favorable.” While the young ladies formed pickets to look out for the gallant _militaire_, I seized the opportunity of prosecuting my acquaintance with Miss Dashwood, and even in the few and passing observations that fell from her, learned how very different an order of being she was from all I had hitherto seen of country belles. A mixture of courtesy with _naïveté;_ a wish to please, with a certain feminine gentleness, that always flatters a man, and still more a boy that fain would be one,--gained momentarily more and more upon me, and put me also on my mettle to prove to my fair companion that I was not altogether a mere uncultivated and unthinking creature, like the remainder of those about me.