descent of some two feet on the edge of a grass-field he again drove
his spurs into his great fiery mare, all vein and bone. Black Rachel
snorted with amazement at the spur, and with warlike delight at
finding grass beneath her feet and free air whistling round her ears,
she gave one gigantic bound like a buck with arching back and all four
legs in the air at once (it would have unseated many a rider but never
moved the iron Meadows), and with dilating nostril and ears laid back
she hurled herself across country like a stone from a sling.

Meadows' house was about four miles and a half distant as the crow
flies, and he went home to-day as the crow flies, only faster. None
would have known the staid, respectable Meadows, in this figure that
came flying over hedge and ditch and brook, his hat dangling and
leaping like mad behind him, his hand now and then clutching his
breast, his heart tossed like a boat among the breakers, his lips
white, his teeth clinched and his eyes blazing! The mare took
everything in her stride, but at last they came somewhat suddenly on
an enormous high, stiff fence. To clear it was impossible. By this
time man and beast were equally reckless; they went straight into it
and through it as a bullet goes through a pane of glass; and on again
over brook and fence, plowed field and meadow, till Meadows found
himself, he scarce knew how, at his own door. His old deaf servant
came out from the stable-yard and gazed in astonishment at the mare,
whose flank panted, whose tail quivered, whose back looked as if she
had been in the river, while her belly was stained with half a dozen
different kinds of soil, and her rider's face streamed with blood from
a dozen scratches he had never felt.

Meadows flung himself from the saddle and ran up to his own room. He
dashed his face and his burning hands into water; this seemed to do