The grey horse recognized the inevitable; he came up on to the top of the bank with an effort, and jumped boldly out across the boggy stream on the far side. Glasgow came next, getting over with a scramble, and after him followed the wholly incredible Isabella. As Major Bunbury, cramming his screwy mare at the same place, saw Isabella’s crafty hind legs fetch securely up on the bank, he said to himself, with some excitement, that Miss Morris was a clinking good girl, and that there was nothing in creation like an Irish mare, young or old. At this juncture his own mare alighted on her chest and nose, and the eulogy was interrupted. Slaney was but chaotically conscious of subsequent events. The hounds crested the hill, and sped down into the brown and green patchwork of the rough country at the other side, and in a dream-like rush she pursued the flying figures of Glasgow and Lady Susan, scuffling and sliding down rocky hillsides, straining up again with fingers twisted in Isabella’s abundant mane, scrambling over rotten fences, splashing and labouring through bog, bucking over loose walls, while physical effort and the excitement of success were mixed up with the fragrance of the beaten sod, the peaty whiff of the broken bog fence, and the consciousness of encomium and advice from Major Bunbury. There was a check or two, when she was aware of puffing horses snatching their wind, and flushed riders, telling each other that it was a great run, and then again the brown country flowing past her, and the unfailing guile of Isabella. It was an hour and a half before Glasgow, dropping down into a road from the top of a heathery bank, found the hounds at fault on the edge of a wide and famished expanse, half marsh, half bog. They seemed beaten and spiritless; some were already sitting idle and panting on their haunches, and one of the younger ones was baying at a little bare-legged girl, who was uttering lamentable cries at finding herself in the middle of the pack. She and the few starveling cattle she was tending were the only living creatures in sight. It was a flat and inexplicable conclusion, but it was final beyond all ingenuity of casting. It was a twelve-mile ride home for Slaney. She turned Isabella’s head almost immediately, and started at a walk, while the heat and enthusiasm died slowly away, and to-morrow lay as flat and cold before her as the marsh at her side. She was soon out of sight and hearing of the group on the road, and passed on through the loneliness of the barren hills, a tired figure on a tired horse, forgotten by all. So it was that she saw herself, with that acute perception of the gloom of the position that is with some natures the preliminary to tears. “What happened to Slaney Morris?” said Lady Susan to Glasgow, an hour later, as she rode home with him. “She vanished like the fox. Is _she_ a witch, too? I think she must be to have got that old crock along as she did.”