A few minutes later, the hounds, having overrun the scent, came to a check, and were gathered by the huntsman into a green lane, from whence they were about to “try back” as Rattling Bess came up at unabated speed. “Hold hard there, hold hard!” shouted at once the huntsman, the whips, and the few sportsmen who were up with the hounds. “Where the devil are you going, man?” “The fox is viewed back.” “Halloo!—you’re riding into the middle of the pack.” These and similar cries scarcely had time to reach the ears of Perrot, ere “Rattling Bess” sprang over the hedge into a green lane, and coming down upon the unfortunate dogs, split the head of one, broke the back of another, and, laming two or three more, carried her rider over the opposite fence, who, still panting for breath, with his teeth set, muttered, “She know her business, sacré animal.” After crossing two more fields, she cleared a hedge, so thick that he could not see what was on the other side; but he heard a tremendous crash, and was only conscious of being hurled with violence to the ground: slowly recovering his senses, he saw Rattling Bess lying a few yards from him, bleeding profusely; and his own ears were saluted by the following compassionate inquiry from the lips of a gardener, who was standing over him, spade in hand: “D—n your stupid outlandish head, what be you a doin’ here?” The half–stunned courier, pointing to Rattling Bess, replied: “She know her business.” The gardener, though enraged at the entire demolition of his melon–bed, and of sundry forced vegetables under glass, was not an ill–tempered fellow in the main; and seeing that the horse was half killed, and the rider, a foreigner, much bruised, he assisted poor Perrot to rise; and having gathered from him that he was in the service of rich Squire Shirley, rendered all the aid in his power to him and to Rattling Bess, who had received some very severe cuts from the glass. When the events of the day came to be talked over at the Hall, and it proved that it was the squire himself whom Perrot had so unceremoniously ridden over,—that the huntsman would expect some twenty guineas for the hounds killed or maimed—that the gardener would probably present a similar or a larger account for a broken melon–bed and shivered glass—_and_ that Rattling Bess was lame for the season, the squire did not encourage much conversation on the day’s sport; the only remark that he was heard to make, being, “What a fool I was to put a frog–eating Frenchman on an English hunter!” Monsieur Perrot remained in his room for three or four days, not caring that Mary should see his visage while it was adorned with a black eye and an inflamed nose.