Let no one shout before they are out of the wood. Hardly have the words left her mouth, when all at once, at their very feet almost, from among the seven-foot-high fern, where they have been crouching, rise a score of deer with sudden rustling; and, their slender knees bent, spring away with speedy grace through the mimic forest. Esther's mare, frightened at the sudden apparition (many horses are afraid of deer), swerves violently to the left; then gets her head down, and sets to kicking as if she would kick herself out of her skin. "Mind! Take care! Hold tight! Keep her head up!" shouts St. John, in an agony. Next moment the chesnut, with head in the air, nostrils extended, and bridle swinging to and fro against her fore legs, tears riderless past him. In a second he is off, and at the side of the heap of blue cloth that is lying motionless among the buttercups. "I'm not dead," says the heap, raising itself, and smiling rather a difficult smile up at him, as he leans over it or her, his burnt face whitened with extremest fear. "Don't look so frightened!" "Thank God!" he says, hardly above his breath, and more devoutly than he is in the habit of saying his prayers. "When I saw you there, lying all shapeless, I half thought--Oh!" (with a shudder) "I don't know what I thought." "I must be tied on next time, mustn't I?" says Essie, putting up her hand to her head with an uncertain movement, as if she were not quite sure of finding it there. "Oh! Mr. Gerard,"--the colour coming back faintly to her lips and cheeks--"I _do_ hate riding! it's horribly dangerous! quite as bad as a battle!" "Quite!" acquiesces St. John, laughing heartily in his intense relief. "And you are quite sure you are not hurt?" "Quite!" "Really?" "Really!" To prove how perfectly intact she is, she jumps up; but, as she does so, her face grows slightly distorted with a look of pain, and she sinks back on her buttercup bed. "Not quite sure, either; I seem to have done something stupid to my foot--turned it or twisted it." So saying, she thrusts out from under her habit a small foot. It _is_ a small--a _very_ small--foot; but the boot in which it is cased is country made, and about three times too big for it; so that it might rattle in it, like a pea in a drum. Even at this affecting moment St. John cannot repress a slight feeling of disappointment. "I'm awfully sorry! Whereabouts does it hurt? There?" putting his fingers gently on the slender, rounded ankle. "Yes, a little." "I'm awfully sorry!" (You see there is not much variety in his laments.) "What can I do for it? gallop home as hard as I can, and make them send the carriage?" "With a doctor, a lawyer, and a parson in it? No, I think not." "But you cannot sit here all night. Could you _ride_ home, do you think?" "On that dreadful beast?" with a horrified intonation. "But if I lead her all the way?" "Very well" (reluctantly); "but (brightening a little) I cannot ride her; she is not here."