T

HERE was a time when Gilchrist had been as light-hearted a young man as ever led a cotillon or talked genially of himself in the cheering glow of after dinner. But that was before the M. F. H. of the Brookbridge Hunt Club had gone to Carlsbad and left him temporarily in charge. Then Gilchrist mislaid his sense of humor which had done duty as a conscience for years.

In the first place, the Brookbridge hunt occupied a rather delicate position in the county; a position analogous to that of a lady who, having made an advantageous marriage, is continually perturbed lest her lack of early education may lead her into betraying herself. Brookbridge was an old Virginia town, about sixty miles from Washington, that since the Civil War had not really got its second wind. It was full of aristocrats who baked cake, preserved, or made Irish crochet for the Ladies' Exchange, or who fought, bled, and died again at the corner grocery—according to sex; but who never lost their dignity or their traditions.

Then one day some people came from New York and bought several hundred acres, overhauled the old Colonial house, and put in so many bath-tubs that old Brookbridge concluded it was going to have some sort of hydropathic institution. But it wasn't, and a family moved in. Then more people came and more, all bath-tub mad apparently, and the little freight depot at the railroad station was so congested with porcelain tubs that the native butter-and-egg trade suffered.

Strange diversions had these rich folk from the North, but to the native Virginian none of them presented quite so many elements of humor as the hunt club. Of course, Virginia had always hunted, but it hunted something tangible, and it did not dress for the business as if for a masquerade. It seemed that this particular hunt club, for all its sartorial

elaboration, hunted nothing worse than a bad smell. Foxes, like many other things in Virginia after the war, had grown scarce, and the aborigines, in the autumn, pursued the humbler coon-the moon high in heavens, the hounds baying lustily. In due season they hunted other things, and cooked them with surviving rites of the culinary black arts. Not so the hunt club. Gilchrist laid the drag the day before, and on the morrow it set forth in its splendid pink and pursued the noxious effluvia.

On such an errand one November day departed Gilchrist, when his horse, picking up a nail near the Neville barn, went lame. Now the Neville family was the social conundrum of the county. With almost diabolical ingenuity it continued to evade classification; it had no conspicuous high - lights, no strong accents, and beyond its numbers, which were Biblical or mid- Victorian, there seemed nothing about the Nevilles that one could lay hands on. The old F. F. V.'s noticed that their bath-tubs did not obtrude themselves quite as openly on the county as did the other new people's tubs, and beyond deciding that they seemed "refined," and did not act as if they had discovered the art of bathing, the native aristocrats did not trouble their heads.

Some of the hunting set met various members of the much-discussed family at the post-office inquiring for mail, and the verdict was that their speech was somewhat lacking in the broad "a," a matter about which the club was most scrupulous, pronouncing every" a broad, even in words like "hand and "stand." Furthermore, the Nevilles seemed absolutely unhampered by conventions; they drove the shabbiest rigs. the daughters took ten mile constitutionals in midwinter, clad in straw hats and shocking tweeds; one of the sons with his own hands, painted some identi fying stripes on his luggage, and ac

tually selected the front lawn as the theater of his enterprise. And when he went on the journey he had striped his luggage for, he did not travel by parlor

car.

It had become the particular obsession of Gilchrist that the Nevilles, seven or eight strong the full extent of their numbers was doubtful-intended to break into the hunt club during the absence of the master, and he continually saw himself, waking and sleeping, a sort of Horatius holding the bridge against them. The situation was further complicated by one of the girls, alleged to be named Muriel, whose beauty was of the type to unsettle social conditions

anywhere. King Cophetua's beggarmaid must have had just such eyes, or Anne Boleyn perhaps, or any of the ladies who have upset royal dynasties by a glance. This particular Neville was distractingly lovely-not pretty, or fascinating, or interesting, or subtly challenging, or any of the other delightful makeshifts that girls construct their little life dramas out of, but frankly and indisputably beautiful: a rich chestnut beauty, with a flash of red, a dash of gipsy, and the vividness of color and line softened by the early morning mist of youth and inexperience.

Gilchrist felt that the Neville cohorts

would put forth Muriel as the apex of

their flying wedge for the hunt-club goal, and daily he put his susceptible soul through a rigorous course of calisthenics. When his mare went lame near the Neville barn it seemed as if the forces of nature were in league against him.

His emotions were beyond the power of language to alleviate; so, dumbly dismounting, he tied the unfortunate mare to a fence-post and made his way to the Neville stables. She had picked up a nail, the frog was cut, and there was need of immediate assistance. In imagination he saw the entire Neville tribe, of assorted sizes and sexes, poised in its saddles, riding cross-country, full-fledged members of the hunt as the result of this particular episode. So convinced was he that they stayed awake nights scheming for this happy consummation of their hopes, that he was almost prepared to believe them capable of holding him as a hostage till the preliminaries of their hunt-club election had been arranged.

A male Neville was in possession of the stables-a big, bronzed, elder-brother sort of person who had a voice like Wotan explaining the family history to Brunhilde. And with him, playing with a couple of Airedale terriers, was Muriel -made for the destruction of men and things; creeds, dynasties, politics, social distinctions, county exclusiveness; the drag hunt itself! The sportive gods had fashioned her to play tenpins with them all.

Gilchrist introduced himself, explained his predicament, and asked permission to telephone for a vet. As he expected, the Nevilles were suspiciously cordial. Wotan summoned a groom and went to look at the mare's foot.

"Are you fond of dogs?" inquired the M. F. H. pro tem. of the dazzling vision in shabby corduroy. The commonplaceness of his question smote him as soon as it was out.

"Rather." She did not glance at him. She was one of those women who do not have to be amiable or wear pretty clothes or flatter. The preliminaries of subjugation had not the least interest for her. Gilchrist contemplated following up his remark about dogs with one about horses. But remembering that horses suggested hunting, and hunting the club, he refrained.

Wotan and the groom went to inspect the mare's hoof, and the M. F. H. pro tem. floundered after them. Muriel, whistling to the dogs, followed with an air of detachment that was perfect. She made not the slightest attempt at conversation; her errand was, apparently, a humane consideration of the afflicted horse. But the M. F. H. pro tem, fancied that this indifferent exterior which encased her like the bell of a diver was a sign of her thirty-third degree coquetry.

When the hoof had been dressed and the invalid had limped to a box-stall, Gilchrist's eye, roving round the big, businesslike-looking stables, was attracted by a horse well worth looking at.

"That's Greyboy, our Irish hunter." And Wotan nodded to the groom indulgently to lead him out. He proved to be a finely bred horse, with shoulders that raked back in a way to gladden the eye of a hunting-man, and the true Irish jumping hind-quarters. The gray held his head magnificently, and while looking as if he could fly like Pegasus, he hid such potentiality beneath the manners of an old-school gentleman.

"You may try him if you like. Come up to the house for a cup of tea, then ride him home your mare is out of commission. He's rather a lamb for all his 'shod-with-fire' appearance."

Something in Mr. Gilchrist's chest grew steely as he felt his detective talents grapple with the Neville question. These people had come to Brookbridge to sell horses! That was the trick up the family sleeve-as if half the hunt had not a string it was trying to dispose of already; Gilchrist had even one or two of his own. In addition to trying to break into the club, they contemplated the social selling of horses!

But Gilchrist, despite the double lure of Muriel and the Irish hunter, was adamant. He remembered, when he had been a little boy in a velvet suit and lace collar, two middle-aged boys-all of ten and twelve-quite tatterdemalion in aspect, decoying him to a lot-territory forbidden by maternal edict--and there getting from him an agate alley, a musical top, and a box of colored crayons. As a man who knows the world, Gilchrist did not propose to be "done" a second time.