More grass. They grew aware of other riders behind them: Sir Siegfried, very pleased with himself; Ross Titterton, riding jealous to be up; Lady Helen.
The next fence was blackthorn, thick as night, not a gap in it. The hounds, spreading out, scrambled through. Will Oakley's horse balanced himself like a good hunter; jumped; and took it clean. Jock Herbert followed him over. The colonel, hat crammed to pate, galloped at it; blundered through somehow.
Sir Siegfried, on his bay, shot past Ronnie. Aliette, easing Miracle for his leap, saw the self-satisfied smile wiped from the politician's face as he took off; felt Miracle rise under her; landed safe on plow; turned her head to glimpse a big gray horse in mid-air; and, turning, heard the thud of a fall as Sir Siegfried's four-hundred-guinea bay pecked, slid, and rolled over sideways, wrenched to disaster by clumsy hands.
"Good toss, that," laughed Ronald Cavendish as they cantered slow over the heavy plow. "Who is he?"
"The member for Mid-Oxfordshire." Aliette, too, laughed: it had been a great little burst from covert, and the heart in her--the heart that loved hounds and horses--still beat to it.
"Good fox," said Ronnie.
"Isn't he!" said Aliette.
He was! By now four good fields separated its brushed quarry from the loud pack that labored--sterns and heads level--across sliced loam.
"Devil take the stuff!" muttered Colonel Sanders, watching hounds draw away from him. And "Thank God for a gate!" muttered Colonel Sanders as he made for it.
Huntsman and whip, too, were making for that gate. Aliette and Ronnie followed their lead, the gray plunging across the holding furrows like a ship in a storm. Looking back, they saw the pink politician struggling with his horse, half a dozen black-coats safely landed, Lady Helen barging in their wake.