Under Two Flags

and let's follow. The world has no

l twilight, and makes the hounds pick the scent slowly and wretchedly over marsh and through water? Who would not give fifty guineas a second for the glorious thirty minutes of racing that show steam and steel over fence and fallow in a clipping rush, without a check from find to finish? So be it ever! The riding that graces the Shires, that makes Tedworth and Pytchley, the Duke's and the Fitzwilliam's, household words and "names beloved"-that fills Melton and Market Harborough, and makes the best flirts of the ballroom gallop fifteen m

ve to every breakfast and garden party in the season in his brougham with the blinds down lest a grain of dust should touch him; thought a waltz too exhaustive, and a saunter down Pall Mall too tiring, and asked to have the end of a novel told him in the clubs, because it was too mu

ten minutes," said Rake, with a dash of desperation for th

epily, finishing his cup of coffee,

re all down, sir, and

must wait for m

f the door, and a strong volume of Turkish thro

il, with appealing rebuke. "If a fellow were dead, how

of his colossal stature into the chamber. "We've all done breakfast;

aintive resignation from the D

point of discovering a man she's in love with to be her own grandfather; the complication is absolutely thrilling," murmured Beauty, whom nothing could e

sed the volume straight to

you, Beaut

you know; only the cads and the clergy can damn one nowadays; it's such b

s back over the first cropper,"

himself with reluctance, while the Se

s truly for the moment loath to leave his bed, his coffee, and his novel; he must have his leg over the saddle, and feel the strain on his

ently under Willon's hand, scenting the fresh, keen, sunny air, and knowing as well what all those bits of scarlet straying in through field and lane, gate and gap, meant, as well as though the merry notes of the master's horn were winding over the gorse. The meet was brilliant and very large; showing such a gathering as only the Melton country can; and foremost among the crowd of carriages, hack

lf into saddle. The Seraph gave a leonine growl, sighed, and acquiesced. He detested women in the hunting-fi

men from Egerton Lodge, and restoring the Zu-Zu from sulkiness, by a propitiatory offer of a little gold sherry-flash, studded with turquoises, just ordered for her from Regent Street, which, however, she ungraciously contemned, because she thought it had only cost twenty guineas; anchoring the victimized Seraph beside her by an adroit "Ah! by the way, Rock, give Zu-Zu one of your rose-scented papelitos; she's been wild to smoke them";

Zu foremost of all in the rush through the spinneys while Cecil on the King, and the Seraph on a magnificent white weight-carrier, as thoroughbred and colossal as himself, led the way with them. The scent was hot as death in the spinneys, and the pack raced till nothing but a good one co

s attar-of-rose cigarette. Lady Guenevere heard the words as Vivandiere rose in the air with the light bound of a roe, and a slight superb dash of scorn came into her haughty eyes for the moment; she never seemed t

aying off far and wide, and coming to grief with lots of "downers," it grew select, and few but the crack men could keep the hounds in view. "Catch 'em who can," was the one mot d'ordre, for they were literally racing; the line-hunters never losing the scent a second, as the fox, taking to dodging, made a

d the self-same fencing as had won him the Vase. Lady Guenevere and the Seraph were running almost even with him; three of the Household farther down; the Zu-Zu and some Melton men two meadows off; the rest of the field, nowhere. Fifty-two minutes had gone by in that splendid running, without a single check, while the fox raced as gamely and as fast as at the find; the speed was like lightning past the brown woods, the dark-green pine pl

iding 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

helter of the boxwood and laurel. "After him, my beauties, my beauties-if he run there he'll go to ground and save his brush!" thundered the Seraph, as though he were hunting his own hounds at Lyonnesse, who knew every tone of his rich clarion notes as well as they knew every wind of his horn. But the young ones of the pack saw Reynard's move and his meaning as quickly as he did; having run fast before, they flew now; the pace was terrific. Two fences were crossed as though they were paper; the meadows raced wit

jeweled watch, the size of a sixpence, that was set in the handle of her whip, as the b

wanted, were brought to her companions. The stragglers strayed in; the M. F. H. came up just too late; the men, getting down, gathered about the Countess or lounged on the gray stone steps of the Elizabethan house. The sun shone brightly on the oriole casements, the antique gables, the twisted chimneys, all covered with crimson paras

with a contented smile about hi

ily; his young brother, whom he had scarcely seen since the find, had been

iled as he was, reckless in everything, and egotist t

llow, his chest bare, and his right arm broken and splintered. The deathlike coma was but the result of the chloroform; but Cecil

t. I should hav

A minute, and he conquered himself; he rose, and with his hand on the boy's fair tumbled curls

s the m

ll, at his age," replied the surgeon. "When he wakes out

his hand had not shaken, two days before, when nothing less

"He is not overstrong, to be sure, but the contusions

id he

he was remembering the death-bed of their mother, when the only voice he had ever reverenced had whispered, as she pointed to the little child of three summers:

arm apologetically, af

me the favor to go to his lordship? His grief made him perfectly wild-so dangerous to his life at his age. We co

all, so utterly unaccustomed to think painfully, that he scarcely knew what ailed him. Had he had his old tac

door of his private apartments, heavily darkened and heavi

news o

orward. "The injuries are not grave, they tell me. I

ptuous gesture; the grief for his favorite's danger, the wild terrors that his fears had conjured up,

g with rage. "I wish to God you had been dead in a ditch before a h

offend him, for he knew his father was in that moment scarce better than a

you had had the heart of a man, you would have saved such a child as that from his peril; warned him, watched him, succored him at least when he fell. Instead of that, you ride on and leave him to die, if death comes to

h which the words were hurled out, as the majestic form of the old Lord

the bitter phrases scathed and cut like scourges, but he bowed once

I give you the trouble of it. May

ke the man I cursed living and curse dead. You look at me with Alan Bertie's eyes, you speak to m

hot; he felt like one suddenly stabbed in the dark by a sure and a cruel hand. The insult and the amazement of the words seemed to paralyze him for the moment, the next he recovered

he angels. Henceforth you can be only to me a slanderer

is hot and bitter pain, and his bewildered sense of sudden outrage, he almost smiled at himself. "It is a mania; he does not know what h

me, and gentle though his nature was, beyond all forgiv