“Water! Take care!” cried Cecil, with a warning wave of his hand as the hounds, with a splash like a torrent, dashed up to their necks in a broad, brawling brook that Reynard had swam in first-rate style, and struggled as best they could after him. It was an awkward bit, with bad taking-off and a villainous mud-bank for landing; and the water, thickened and swollen with recent rains, had made all the land that sloped to it miry and soft as sponge. It was the risk of life and limb to try it; but all who still viewed the hounds, catching Bertie's shout of warning, worked their horses up for it, and charged toward it as hotly as troops charge a square. Forest King was over like a bird; the winner of the Grand Military was not to be daunted by all the puny streams of the Shires; the artistic riding of the Countess landed Vivandiere, with a beautiful clear spring, after him by a couple of lengths: the Seraph's handsome white hunter, brought up at a headlong gallop with characteristic careless dash and fine science mingled, cleared it; but, falling with a mighty crash, gave him a purler on the opposite side, and was within an inch of striking him dead with his hoof in frantic struggles to recover. The Seraph, however, was on his legs with a rapidity marvelous in a six-foot-three son of Anak, picked up the horse, threw himself into saddle, and dashed off again quick as lightning, with his scarlet stained all over, and his long fair mustaches floating in the wind. The Zu-Zu turned Mother of Pearl back with a fiery French oath; she hated to be “cut down,” but she liked still less to risk her neck; and two of the Household were already treated to “crackers” that disabled them for the day, while one Melton man was pitched head foremost into the brook, and another was sitting dolorously on the bank with his horse's head in his lap, and the poor brute's spine broken. There were only three of the first riders in England now alone with the hounds, who, with a cold scent as the fox led them through the angular corner of a thick pheasant covert, stuck like wax to the line, and working him out, viewed him once more, for one wild, breathless, tantalizing second; and through the straggling street of a little hamlet, and got him out again on the level pasture and across a fine line of hunting country, with the leafless woods and the low gates of a park far away to their westward.