The words were scarcely out of his mouth when both men heard the sound of a horse’s hoofs trampling over the dry leaves and young twigs behind them. Pressing a little forward, they came to a point where a passage seemed to have been made through the trees, not much more than four feet wide. Standing within the shadow of the woods so that their figures were hidden, both young men turned their gaze in the direction of the horse’s galloping feet, and through an opening in the trees both saw at the same moment a young girl, mounted on a beautiful little black thoroughbred, flying towards them.
She was making straight for the bank. Her small, half-childish face was pale, her mouth fast shut, while her great dark eyes shone with excitement. Under her soft felt hat her dark hair, tossed by the wind, fluttered in soft ringlets round her face, rebellious of the hairpins which held it in check in a coil at the back of her head. In figure she was very slender and youthful looking, and her plain dark green habit emphasized her lack of superfluous curves. Even though she passed so quickly, both the two friends received the same powerful impression of excitement, intensity, and enjoyment stamped upon her features.
“She can’t be going to jump that wall!”
The same exclamation was on the lips of both. At the foot of the bank rider and steed paused. The girl stooped over her horse’s neck, and murmured something in caressing tones. Then she lifted the reins, the little thoroughbred ran up the bank like a cat, lifted his forefeet, and disappeared with his rider over the wall.
“By Jove!”
“I never saw anything neater!”
Just an interchange of these remarks, and then Claud and Hilary instinctively made their way to the bank, and slowly and laboriously ascended its steep sides. The stone wall was about five feet high, and over the other side the ground shelved again in an awkward dip before what seemed the fringe of a dense wood.
Hilary paused by the wall, but found that Claud had already begun to climb it by means of the uneven stones.
“We can’t go any farther,” said the Yorkshireman, quietly; “this is private property.”
“What does that matter? We are out for adventures. I never saw any one with a seat like that child’s, did you?”