Nobody's Child

heir brown frost-dulled blanket, was quickening into fresh green the woody stems of arbutus. The mid-morning sun had struggled out of a gray March chill and was setting a-gleam the drops of mo

woodland, looked with smiling understanding at the slow yielding of winter. Another winter added to her sum of seventeen. Or, rat

hly turned for oats, the trails of the snake-fences strangled by brown undergrowth, the twists and curves of the creek that divided the pasture from the upward slopes of grain-land, and, beyond, against the horizon, th

he Mine Banks lovely," A

ks in the distance, and behind her reached to the Post-Road. She skirted the woods for a time, the horse straining through sand, a rough roa

eached the turn when a streak of red, a fox running swift and low, darted across the road, slid over the corner of pasture that lay betwe

he huntsmen. The next moment the whole pack swept almost under her horse's nose, over and under and through the rail-fence, across the bit of

holes above the river, an all day's sport for the Fox-Ridge Hunt Club. The woods rang and rustled now to their approach. Some took the fence, some came out by the roa

rt, then set on the hounds. She looked with tingling wistfulness after the aristocracy of the Ridge, embarked on its Saturday of excitement and pleasure, then with lifted lip at the thin

muddy Post-Road and through the sand of the Back Road, and the wait here was pleasanter than the return to the farm would be. The hunt had passed,

up and by her, headed for the creek, two belated huntsmen come cross-country from the Post-Road and evidently intent upon joining the hunt. Ann recognized the foremost rider first from his horse, a long-necked, clean-limbed sorrel, then from the fleeting glimpse of the man's prof

e buggy to see it.... Saw one horse go down, pitching his rider over his head, and the other horseman, not Garvin Westmore, go on-whe