“Easier going presently, I trust,” the latter said, as his horse sank an off leg. “Look at the dogs,” he added, as the pack darted away in a course almost at right angles to their first. “We’ll have a run for our money!” “Stiff going?” said Longacre, watching the black mare drawing up on the M. F. H. “Ground gets better; fences, ditches, worse; the neck-breaking course of the country.” Thair, craning forward, laughed at Julia. “The filly’s got the bit in her teeth. Cruel going—got to see it through somehow!” He took the other side of a mire and edged away to the left, seeking the narrowest place in the nearing ditch. It looked easy, a tiny gully swollen full by the rains. But Longacre knew how the banks, under-eaten by water, would not give firm footing to a dog. Julia rode at it as if it were a crack in a rock. Holden, who was having his first experience cross-country, slacked a little; but Longacre crowded forward, reckless of the boggy ground. “Take it long—long!” he entreated. Her eyes flashed at him. “Are you afraid?” she cried. The horses rose together. His went over like a swallow. The black mare jumped short. One hind foot went down, but hands and voice and Kentucky blood lifted her out with hardly a struggle. Holden’s bay had refused the leap. Another had floundered badly. Thair’s pink coat was sailing along the lower field toward a break in the brush fence. “Shall we lead him?” said Julia, pointing on with her whip. “For God’s sake, go carefully!” he entreated. It seemed to delight her to torment him. She pressed forward, looking back with a challenge. Her lips, parted in the ardor of excitement, showed a cruel white of teeth. The ground was precarious, but she rode headlong. It was courting destruction. He kept her pace, not in response to her reckless spirit, but for fear of what might happen, with the desperate hope of averting disaster. They flew down the field toward the thunder of the sea, with the sun and the salt wind strong in their eyes; crashed through the hedge; scrambled down into a road, up the sandy bank on the other side, through the scrub-oaks with a rush, and at once the salt-meadows were before them, their skirts of cypress black on a purple sea. Over the ocean a white arm of fog extended stealthily. Its thin forefinger pointed landward. Already the first films were caught on ragged pine and crooked cypress, like flying shreds of veil. “That’ll cut us short,” said Thair, frowning seaward. “It won’t be in till night,” said Julia, pricking her mare till the creature bounded. “In an hour,” Thair decided. “We won’t make the cypress plantation.” She spurred forward. “We’ll finish by five,” she called back. “We can ride through a hedge—we can ride through a mist.” “A ditch in a fog,” muttered Thair. “Not me!” “We can ride like the devil and get through!” decided the M. F. H. “The damned dogs are off the scent again!”