Achelous or Tiber, emerging from his native waves, crowned with aquatic plants, presented, I doubt not, an appearance at once dignified and becoming, but I defy any ordinary non-amphibious mortal to look, under similar circumstances, any thing but supremely ridiculous. The wrathful face framed in dripping hair and plastered whiskers—the movements of the limbs, awkward and constrained—the rivulets distilling from every salient angle, turning the victim into a walking Lauterbrunnen—when we saw all these absurdities exaggerated before us, no wonder that from the whole party, including the groom, there broke "unnumbered laughters."
"Curse the mare!" Bruce hissed out. The words came crushed and broken, as it were, through the white ranges of his grinding teeth.
Livingstone's face hardened directly. "Swear as much as you think the circumstances require, or as my cousin will allow," he said, "but be just before you're generous: don't anathematize Kathleen. It was no fault of hers. I never saw her refuse before; but she is used to be put straight at her fences. Hold her still, Harry" (to the groom on the farther side, who had caught the mare's rein); "I'll ride her at it myself."
He threw his bridle to Forrester, and, dismounting, cleared the brook at a bound. Then he went up to Kathleen, and began to coax her with voice and hand.
"I'll bet an even fifty he takes her over the first time," said Charley.
Bruce nodded his head, without speaking, to show that he took the bet. I thought he had the best of it, for the mare was so savage and sulky still that a refusal seemed a certainty.
Guy had mounted by this time, and, after taking a wide sweep in the field, came down at the brook. Kathleen was curling her back up, and going short, with the most evident intention of balking; but swerving was next to impossible, for she was fairly held in a vice by her rider's hands and knees. The whip fell heavily twice on either shoulder, and, just at the water's edge, Livingstone drove his heels in and lifted her. It was almost a standing leap, and, as Kathleen landed, a fragment of the bank went crashing into the water from under her hind hoofs, and she went down on her head; but Guy recovered her cleverly, and, turning again, sent her over it twice, backward and forward. The first time the mare did not try to refuse again, but rushed at it, snorting wrathfully, with her head in the air; the second she was quite tamed, and took it evenly in her stride.
"Give Mr. Bruce your horse, Harry, and take the Czar," Guy said. "I'll ride Kathleen home. Steady, old lady—don't fret. We are friends again now."
"So you have got your pony back," I remarked to Forrester.
"Yes, and with interest," was the quiet reply. "I don't think he will owe me much when I have done with him."