"It is over yonder, I suppose?" said Philip pointing to a likely bend in the river bank. "Just so." "Then I will see Mrs. Raby across the cut, and join you there." "But I can manage quite well by myself," protested Belle. "I have no interest in villages, Mrs. Raby; and,--excuse me--before we start your pony's girths require tightening." He slipped from his horse and was at her side before she could reply. "Then I'm off," cried John with a faint shrug of his shoulders. "I'll meet you at the corner, Marsden, in twenty minutes." "Steady, lad, steady!" murmured the Major with his head under the flap of the saddle, as Suleimân figeted to join his stable-companion. Belle standing, tapping her boot with her whip, moved forward. "Give me the reins. I don't see why you should do everything." Philip came up from the girths smiling, and began on the curb. "What a fidget you are! I'm glad John isn't like that." "Curbs and girths mean more than you suppose. There! now you can go neck-and-crop at everything, and I won't say you nay. Steady, lad, steady! One, two, three--are you all right?" "Thank you, I think I have the proper number of hands and feet, and so far as I know my head is on my shoulders," replied Belle tartly. They dipped down a bit from the fields to a sluggish stream edging the higher land, and then scampered across the muddy flats towards the promontory which lay right at the other side of the bend. "Pull up please!" cried Philip. "That strip looks _quick_." "Nonsense! John comes this way every week; it's all right." Belle gave her pony a cut, making it forge ahead; but it was no match for Suleimân who, unaccustomed to the spur, bounded past her. "Pull up, please; don't be foolish, pull up!" Philip shouted, hearing the ominous cloop of his horse's feet. Another dig of the spur, a leap, a flounder, and Suleimân was over the creek. Not so Belle's pony; slower, heavier, it was hopelessly bogged in a second, and floundering about, sank deeper and deeper. "Throw yourself off!" cried Philip; "as far as you can,--arms flat! So,--quite still, please. There is no danger. I can get at you easily, and it is not deep." A minute after his hand closed on her wrist as she lay sinking slowly despite her stillness; for the pony, relieved of her weight, was plunging like a mad thing and churning up the sand and water to slush. "I must get a purchase first; these sands hold like birdlime;" he said after an ineffectual attempt. "Don't be frightened if I let go for a moment." Then with one hand through Suleimân's stirrup he knelt once more on the extreme edge of the firm ground and got a grip of Belle again. "Now then,--all together!" More all together than he desired, for Suleimân, alarmed at the strain, backed violently, reared, and finally broke away, leaving Philip prone on his back in the dirt. "I hope I didn't hurt you," he said, struggling up, rather blindly, to aid Belle's final flounder to safe ground.