easy track for our first ride. And yet, "bad was the best," might
surely be said of that breakneck path. What would an English horse,
or an English lady say, to riding for miles over a slippery winding
ledge on a rocky hill side, where a wall of solid mountain rose up
perpendicularly on the right hand, and on the left a very
respectable sized river hurried over its boulders far beneath the
aerial path; yet this was comparatively a safe track, and presented
but one serious obstacle, over which I was ruthlessly taken. It is
perhaps needless to say we were riding in single file, and equally
unnecessary to state that I was the last; for certainly we should
never have made much progress otherwise. Helen, my bay mare, would
follow her stable companion, on which F--- was mounted, so that was
the way we got on at all.

A sudden sharp turn showed me what appeared to be a low stone wall
running own the spur of the mountain, right across our track, and I
had already begun to disquiet myself about the possibility of
turning back on such a narrow ledge, when I saw F---'s powerful
black horse, with his ears well forward, and his reins, lying loose
on his neck, make a sort of rush at the obstacle, climb up it as a
cat would, stand for an instant, exactly like a performing goat,
with all four legs drawn closely together under him, and then with a
spring disappear on the other side. "This wall", I thought, "must
be but loosely built, for _Leo_ has displaced some of the stones
from its coping." Helen, pretty dear, hurried after her friend and
leader; and before I had time to realize what she was going to do,
she was balancing herself on the crumbling summit of this stone wall
(which was only the freak of a landslip), and as it proved
impossible to remain there, perched like a bird on a very insecure
branch, nothing remained except to gather herself well together and