“That’ll cut us short,” said Thair, frowning seaward.
“It won’t be in till night,” said Julia, pricking her mare till the creature bounded.
“In an hour,” Thair decided. “We won’t make the cypress plantation.”
She spurred forward. “We’ll finish by five,” she called back. “We can ride through a hedge—we can ride through a mist.”
“A ditch in a fog,” muttered Thair. “Not me!”
“We can ride like the devil and get through!” decided the M. F. H. “The damned dogs are off the scent again!”
Below, among the tussocks of the first meadow, the pack were whimpering, mingling, starting off on a false scent—returning, fawning, leaping up on Julia riding to and fro among them. The exasperated whipper-in beat at them. The four other riders came stringing over the rise among the sand-hummocks.
They scattered down the dip among the dispersed and nosing pack.
“Why on earth is there such a long break?”—Bessie Lewis’s treble.
“_I_ didn’t carry the drag!” cried Julia, furiously, fretted with the delay. “Loo, loo, loo!” She urged the dogs. “Good heavens! I could find it quicker myself!”
She couldn’t—or wouldn’t—rein the black in to the group gathered in the lee of the dunes, but darted away with swoops and stops beyond the farthest-straying dog.
“Can’t we call it off?” urged Holden, looking anxiously at the encroaching fog. It was spreading out, a thick sheet raveling at the edges.
“Not until we have to!” said Thair, well into his cross-country humor. “But don’t let the young madam get too far ahead.”
Then Longacre—who had never taken his eyes from where Julia glimmered down the somber sward—“They have it! They’re off!” and was away after them.
He heard the rest hot-pace behind, but he had a moment’s advantage, and, having saved his horse between ditch and fence, now drew away fresh as at the start. He had an open course—two miles of sandy turf—to catch her in. She had ridden down near the sea, and, following the pack, now zigzagged up hill. He, hugging the line of the dunes, cut off a corner, and so caught up with her. Hearing him coming, she spurred harder; but he drew up inch by inch, until, his roan abreast her black, they rushed into the face of the wind together.
Hounds in front and hunters behind were forgotten; between the cypresses crowding down from the hills, and the oblivion of fog beating in from sea, they sped, wild with the elation of flight, unmindful of beginning, oblivious of end.