On, on, on, till all the pinks and buckskins, erst so smart, were splashed with clay and dirt of every hue, and all the horses' late glossy coats were bathed with sweat and lathered with foam, and their gaping nostrils blowing and glowing red; and then it was that Harrowden brook, swollen wide and deep by the late rains, came right between the fox and Dogmore underwood, for which he was making. The hunt sweeping down a hill-side caught sight of Reynard running for the brook. They made sure of him now. But he lapped a drop, and then slipped in, and soon crawled out on the other side, and made feebly for the covert, weighted with wet fur. At sight of him the hunt hallooed and trumpeted, and came tearing on with fresh vigor. But, when they came near the brook, lo! it was twenty feet wide, and running fast and brown. Some riders skirted it, looking for a narrow part. Two horses, being spurred at it, came to the bank, and then went rearing round on their heels, depositing one hat and another rider in the current. One gallant steed planted his feet like a tower, and snorted down at the water. One flopped gravely in and had to swim, and be dragged out. Another leaped, and landed with his feet on the other bank, his haunches in the water, and his rider curled round his neck and glaring out between his retroverted ears. But Miss Peyton encouraged her horse with spur and voice, set her teeth, turned rather pale this time, and went at the brook with a rush, and cleared it like a deer. She and the huntsman were almost alone together on the other side, and were as close to the hounds as the hounds were to poor pug, when he slipped through a run in a quickset hedge, and glided into Dogmore underwood, a stiff hazel coppice of five years' growth. The other riders soon straggled up, and then the thing was to get him out again. There were a few narrow roads cut in the underwood, and up and down these the huntsman and whipper-in went trotting, and encouraged the staunch hounds, and whipped the skulkers back into covert. Others galloped uselessly about, pounding the earth, for daisy-cutters were few in those days; and Miss Peyton relapsed into the transcendental. She sat in one place with her elbow on her knee, and her fair chin supported by two fingers, as undisturbed by the fracas of horns and voices as an equestrian statue of Diana.