The bell for saddling rang, and the horses came out. The mare stripped beautifully, as fine as a star--no wonder her mistress was proud of her; and I think she had, to the full, as many admirers as the Axeine.
The latter was a dark chestnut with a white fetlock, standing full 16 hands (while the mare scarcely topped 15), well ribbed up, with a good sloping shoulder, immense flat hocks, and sinewy thighs; his crest and forehand were like a stallion's; and, when you looked at his quarters, it was easy to believe what the Revesby stablemen said, "They could shoot a man into the next county."
He was "orkarder than usual that morning," the groom remarked; perhaps he did not fancy the crowd without the hounds, for he kept lashing out perpetually, with vicious backward glances from his red eyes.
Then the riders showed: Livingstone in his own colors, purple and scarlet cap, workmanlike and weather-stained; Forrester in the fresh glories of light blue with white sleeves, his cap quartered with the same.
Charley lingered a minute by Miss Raymond's side, taking her last instructions, I suppose. She looked very nervous and pale, her jockey pleasantly languid as ever.
The instant the chestnut was mounted he reared, and indulged in two or three "buck-jumps" that would have made a weaker man tremble for his back-bone, and then kicked furiously; but Guy seemed to take it all as a matter of course, sitting square and erect; all he did was to drive the sharp rowels in repeatedly, bringing a dark blood-spot out with each stroke. It was not by love certainly that he ruled the Axeine. Then came the preliminary gallops, the mare going easily on her bit, gliding over the ground smoothly and springily; the horse shaking his head, and every now and then tearing madly at the reins, without being able to gain a hair's breadth on the iron hands that never moved from his withers.
"They're off!" Guy taking the lead; well over the first two fences, fair hunting ones; the third is a teaser--an ugly black bulfinch, with a ditch on the landing side, and a drop into a plowed field. The chestnut's devil is thoroughly roused by this time. When within sixty yards of the fence, he puts on a rush that even his rider's mighty muscles can not check: his impetus would send him through a castle wall; but he hardly rises at the leap, taking it, too, where there is a network of growers--a crash that might be heard in the grand stand--and horse and man are rolling in the field beyond.