A long shout of “gone away” came from the watcher on the hill, and the hounds came tumbling out of the wood in the lovely headlong rush that has the shape of a wave and a thousandfold its impetuosity. With the indescribable chorus of yells and squeals that is known as full cry, they swept past Slaney, and it was at this juncture that Isabella, the brown mare, found herself the victim of a gush of enthusiasm. It may have been a survival in her old soul of the days when she had, according to tradition, carried the huntsman of the county pack; it may have been that she, like her rider, was lifted out of herself by the discerning of spiritual things; at any rate, when she found her head pointed at a promising place in the fence, she bundled over it with an agility for which no one would have given her credit, and Slaney found herself galloping alone behind the racing pack. The fox had done all that was most unexpected, had gone away into the teeth of the wind, in a direction wide of any known destination, and the field, both horse and foot, were all left at the wrong side of the big irregular covert. Yet Slaney had not gone a hundred yards when Lady Susan and Glasgow were behind her like a storm, and shot past with their horses pulling in the wildness of a first burst. The next fence was a towering bank, wet and rotten and blind with briars, feasible only at a spot where a breach made for cattle had been built up with loose stones. Glasgow came first at it, checking his young horse’s ingenuous desire to buck, and sitting down for a big fly. He was suddenly confronted by Tom Quin at the far side, brandishing a stone as big as a turnip as if in the act to throw it, and the young horse swung round with a jerk that perceptibly tried his rider’s seat. Lady Susan was close in his tracks, and, far from trying to stop her horse, she gave him a vigorous blow with her hunting-crop, and drove him full pace at the fence and its defender. The grey horse jumped like a deer, and Quin perforce sprang aside, cursing vilely and threatening Lady Susan with the stone. She was gone in an instant, and, before Glasgow had pulled his horse together, Slaney and Isabella were charging the place, Slaney with a white face and a crooked hat, Isabella with her long nose poked well forward to take her distance. With an economical yet sufficient hoist of her hind quarters the old mare was over, while Tom Quin remained staring as if stupefied by the feat. “Go away, Tom!” called Slaney, as she passed him. “Don’t mind them--it’s no use--go home!”