"How can that girl _trust_ her naked limbs in such a brake?" said I. "Why not, don't you see she is a _chased_ goddess?" said Don Felix. "Now, Flamingo, I verily believe you will peck at a grain of mustard-seed next," quoth friend Twig. We started; Mrs Cornstick on a stout pony, with the head servant, Mark Antony, by name, but as ugly a flat-nosed _nigger_ as Christian could desire to clap eyes on by _nature_, holding on by its tail. Then came Miss Cornstick on _her_ palfrey, with a similar pendant, but her page was a fine handsome mulatto boy; while we brought up the rear--the whole cavalcade being closed by the mounted servants. By and by, the road being good, although mountainous, we spanked along at a smart rate, and it was then that the two fellows pinned to the ladies' tails--the tails of their ponies, I beg pardon--showed their paces in a most absurd fashion, making great flying strides at every step, so as to keep time with the canter of the quadrupeds. They looked like two dancing-masters gone mad. I thought of Cutty Sark clutching the tail of Tam O'Shanter's grey mare Meg. "Do you see that humming-bird?" said Jacob Twig, who was giving me a cast in his curricle--Flamingo having changed into my uncle's gig. Crack--he knocked it down on the wing with his whip, as it hovered over some flowers on the roadside. "That's what I call a good shot now." "Ah, but a very cruel one," said I. "Sorry for it--shan't do it again, Mr Brail." "Safe in that," thought I. On coming to a cross-road, the Cornsticks struck off to the left, and, saying good-by, we stood on our course. Nothing particular occurred until we were descending the hill into St Thomas in the Vale. The sun was shining brightly without a cloud. The jocund breeze was rushing through the trees, and dashing their masses of foliage hither and thither; turning up the silvery undersides of the leaves at one moment, and then changing their hues into all shades of green the next. The birds were glancing and chirping amongst the branches. The sleek cattle were browsing lazily and contentedly on the slope of the hill; and the merry negro gangs were shouting and laughing at their work--but the vulture was soaring over all in pride of place; eagle-like, far up in the clear blue firmament, as if the abominable bird had been the genius of the yellow fever, hovering above the fair face of nature, ready to stoop and blast it. The sky gradually darkened--all cloudless as it was--for there was not a shred of vapour floating in its pure depths so big as the hand of the servant of the prophet. The gloom increased--not that kind of twilight that precedes the falling of the night--but a sort of lurid purple hue that began mysteriously to pervade the whole atmosphere, as if we had been looking forth on the landscape through a piece of glass stained with smoke.