First there was the minute red flash of the fox, slipping through the furze like a serpent, then the dappled flood of hounds, tails up, giving tongue like bells, then the master of the hunt on his great brown steeplechaser, then the huntsman, gay in pink, leather-faced with puckered eyes, on his little black mare. Then came the bunched hunt, the crash of ditches, the crackle of brambles, the thunder over turf, the splosh-splosh over plowed land. There was the cheering of the country-side.  
There a woman was down at a fence and men stopped to help her. There a riderless horse went by, mane tossing, stirrups flying. Now a groan, now a curse. The country-side flew by as in a motion picture. Patch of brown, patch of green, patch of gray, like a crazy-quilt. The crack of hunting crops, the ppk of spurs. "Tally-ho, boys! tally-ho! On hounds! On!"
 
Morgan with certainty crept ahead of the field, not a hundred yards behind master and huntsman. Beneath him the great gray moved like a steam-engine. A little steadying forward, a rush and a thud, and they were over. Now a ditch was taken with a clatter, now a fence cleared nicely, now through a blackthorn hedge, Morgan's arm up to protect his eyes. Five minutes! Seven. Eight minutes! Nine. Ten, by the Lord Harry! And suddenly they were at Kyle na Maroo—Dead Men's Wood. And the hounds were sniffing, wailing, at check.
 
An old earth-stopper, wizened, purple-lipped, like a grave-digger of "Hamlet," appeared like a troll.
 
"Into the wood he went, your Honor," he addressed the master. "Into the wood the Red One went, your Honor, like a man diving into his own house."
 
"Are all the holes stopped, Mickey Dan?"
 
"Stopped is it, your Honor. Sure they 're stopped as if they were the burrows of the devil himself and the saints to be out hunting him on the judgment-day. Stopped is it? Sure, a worm itself could n't get in or out of them the way I 'm after stopping them with interest and grand care—"
 
"All right, Mickey Dan!" The master interrupted. "Hoick in!" He ordered the huntsmen.
 
"Leu in, boys, leu in. Tinker! David! Dermot! Ranger! Tally in, beauties! Tally in!"
 
Morgan pulled up his hunter and turned around to watch the field come up, no longer bunched, but straggling now. The burst to check had been too much for them. His horse was still fresh, his seat easy. He had done a notable thing, following so closely on the master's mount—the great racer that had won the Grand National—and the huntsman's mare, fleet as a greyhound, with so little weight up. Morgan desired a word of commendation, even a look of envy. But they took no notice of him. He might have been some old fox-hunter, invisible, long dead, riding a specter horse, over some well-remembered run, for all the attention they paid him. To them he was n't there; he did n't exist.
 
And because of Reynardine.
 
And what had he done to Reynardine? It was n't his fault. It was hers. She was in love with him, and then she turned and was not. Was it his fault that a woman was fickle?
 
Yes, she was in love with him. He could even yet see her dark murmuring eyes in the golden light of the candles, as she set there in her white frock and sang to him, her beautifully cut ivory hands plucking haunting melody from a pianoforte as from some old-time clavichord.
 
"Sun and dark I followed her,
    Her eyes did brightly shine:
She took me o'er the mountains,
    Did my sweet Reynardine.
If by chance you look for me
    Perhaps you'll not me find—"
 
Oh, damn! What did she ever come into his life for, anyway! She didn't want a man. She wanted a poet. Crazy! That's what she was, crazy as a coot. He supposed her daughter—their daughter—was as crazy as she!
 
First of all there 'd been the trouble about the hunting. She never said a word about it, but her face had blanched the first morning he saddled up for the Lonth. She had expected him, he laughed, to have the same crazy notions as her family. And her face had been drawn with pain when he came back in the evening. And she had said nothing. Too proud. Too damn crazy and too proud!
 
That evening he had asked her to play "Reynardine"—not that he liked the tune; he'd rather have had something popular, something with body to it, none of your blasted wailing folk-songs. But he just thought it might please her to have him ask. She shook her head, and plunged into Chopin.
 
"I don't think I could play—'Reynardine'—to-night," she said.
 
And she had never played or sung "Reynardine" to him again.
 
She a............