'He has broken it, at last!' shouted the colonel, as Shiver-the- timbers rushed at the high pales, out of breath, and blind with rage. Lancelot saw and heard nothing till he was awakened from his dream by the long heave of the huge brute's shoulder, and the maddening sensation of sweeping through the air over the fence. He started, checked the curb, the horse threw up his head, fulfilling his name by driving his knees like a battering-ram against the pales--the top-bar bent like a withe, flew out into a hundred splinters, and man and horse rolled over headlong into the hard flint-road. For one long sickening second Lancelot watched the blue sky between his own knees. Then a crash as if a shell had burst in his face--a horrible grind--a sheet of flame--and the blackness of night. Did you ever feel it, reader? When he awoke, he found himself lying in bed, with Squire Lavington sitting by him. There was real sorrow in the old man's face, 'Come to himself!' and a great joyful oath rolled out. 'The boldest rider of them all! I wouldn't have lost him for a dozen ready-made spick and span Colonel Bracebridges!' 'Quite right, squire!' answered a laughing voice from behind the curtain. 'Smith has a clear two thousand a year, and I live by my wits!' CHAPTER II: SPRING YEARNINGS I heard a story the other day of our most earnest and genial humorist, who is just now proving himself also our most earnest and genial novelist. 'I like your novel exceedingly,' said a lady; 'the characters are so natural--all but the baronet, and he surely is overdrawn: it is impossible to find such coarseness in his rank of life!' The artist laughed. 'And that character,' said he, 'is almost the only exact portrait in the whole book.' So it is. People do not see the strange things which pass them every day. 'The romance of real life' is only one to the romantic spirit. And then they set up for critics, instead of pupils; as if the artist's business was not just to see what they cannot see--to open their eyes to the harmonies and the discords, the miracles and the absurdities, which seem to them one uniform gray fog of commonplaces. Then let the reader believe, that whatsoever is commonplace in my story is my own invention. Whatsoever may seem extravagant or startling is most likely to be historic fact, else I should not have dared to write it down, finding God's actual dealings here much too wonderful to dare to invent many fresh ones for myself.