"Why such a long face?" he laughed. "You look as if you were going to a funeral and not to a hunt that will beat all the runs to the hounds in the world. We are going to hunt redcoats and fair ladies' smiles and not foxes now; so cheer up, man." "Plague on it, Dick, you are ten miles from home and I am only one," I retorted. "You ought to have seen how bravely her ladyship tried to smile, too." "We will increase the number of miles then," said he, and reaching over he struck Toby across the flank. Well, Toby needs the curb at best, and it was a full half-mile before I brought him up and had a chance to give Dick a rating. But Dick only laughed. And so we rode on, across the low-lying plains of Kent, northward toward the borders of Cecil. For miles we would ride under the shadow of the dense forest, and then we would come to the wide-reaching fields of some great manor or plantation, the manor house itself generally crowning some gently rising knoll amid a grove of trees, with a view of the distant bay, or creek, or river, as the case might be; the cluster of houses, the quarters for the slaves, the stables and the barns, making little villages and hamlets amid the wide expanse of farm lands and the distant circle of the dark green forests. Then, again, a creek or river would bar our course, and we would have to ride for miles until we turned its head, or found a ferry or a ford, and so overcome its opposition. So on we rode until, as the day waxed near the noon hour, we came to the little hamlet of Georgetown, nestling amid the hills on the banks of the Sassafras. Crossing the river at the ferry, we began the last stage of our journey. The trail now skirted the broad lands of Bohemia Manor, and crossed the beautiful river of that name, embedded between the hills and wide-stretching farm lands. As we approached the banks of the Elk the country grew more rolling and wilder--in our front the Iron Hills rose up before us, crowned with forests, in sharp contrast to the low-lying country through which we had been passing. And now, as our appetites became pressing, we urged our horses on, for we had still many miles to travel. CHAPTER II WE MEET THE MAID We had just come in sight of the blue waters of the Elk, as it rolled between the forest-clad hills on either side, basking here for a moment in the sunshine, then lost in the deeper shadows of the overhanging forest. "There rolls the Elk," cried Dick. "Only ten miles more, and a stroke upon a piece of paper, and then, my boy, you are done for. A pain that eats its way ever inward, a thirst that never slackens, and over all the black night lowering down. Aye, so it is, Sir Monk of the Long Face; but we will have some fun before we are put under the sod or our bones are left to whiten on the sands." "That we will, Sir Richard. And now we are in for it, for here comes our first adventure. Is she ugly or is she fair? Which, Sir Richard?"