All this was, however, equally delightful and exciting both to Tom Esterworth and his niece. There was no apprehension in Beatrice's mind, for her uncle drove as well as he rode, and she felt perfectly secure in the strong, supple hands that guided Clochette's erratic movements. "There is not a kick in her," uncle Tom had said, as they started, and he repeated the observation now; and kicking being out of the category of Clochette's iniquities, there was nothing else to fear. No sooner, however, had the words left his lips than a turn of the road brought them within sight of a great volume of black smoke rushing slowly but surely towards them; whilst a horrible roaring and howling, as of an antediluvian monster in its wrath, filled the silence of the summer afternoon with a hideous and unholy confusion. Talk about there being no wild animals in our peaceful land! What could have been the Megatherium and the Ichthyosaurus, and all the fire-spitting dragons of antiquity compared to the traction engines of the nineteenth century? "It's a steam plough!" ejaculated Beatrice, below her breath. "D----n!" cried her uncle, not at all below _his_ breath. As to Clochette, she stood for an instant stock still, with her ears pricked and her head well up, facing the horrors of her situation; next she gave an angry snort as though to say, "No! _this_ is too much!" Then she turned short round and began a series of peculiar bounds and plunges, accompanied by an ominous uplifting of her hind quarters, which had plainly but one object in view--the correct conjugation of the verb active "to kick." There was a crunching of woodwork, a cracking as of iron hoofs against the splash-board. Beatrice instinctively put up her hands before her face, but she did not utter a sound. "Do you think you could get down, Pussy, and go to her head?" "Shall I hold the reins, uncle?" "No, you couldn't hold her; she'll be over the hedge if I let go of her. Get down if you can." It was not easy. Beatrice was in her habit, and to jump from the vacillating height of a dog-cart to the earth is no easy matter even to a man unencumbered with petticoats. "Try and get over the back," said her uncle, who was in momentary terror lest the mare's heels should be dashed into her face. And Beatrice, with that finest trait of a woman's courage in danger, which consists in doing exactly what she is told, began to scramble over the back of her seat. The situation was critical in the extreme; the traction engine came on apace, the man with the red flag having paused at a public-house round the corner, was only now running back into his place. Uncle Tom shouted vainly to him; his voice was drowned in the deafening roar of the advancing monster.