THE PLOUGHMAN It was on a day six weeks later that Doris Elliot next found herself upon the scene of her discomfiture.

She had ridden from her home three miles distant very early on a morning of September to join a meeting of the foxhounds and go cub-hunting.

There had been a heavy fall of rain, and the ground was wet and slippery.
The field that had been all yellow with the shocks of corn was now in process of being ploughed, and her horse Hector sank up to the fetlocks at every stride, a fact which he resented with obvious impatience.

She guided him down to the edge of the river where the ground looked a little harder.
The run was over and she had enjoyed it; but she wanted now to take as short a cut home as possible, and it was through this particular field that the most direct route undoubtedly lay.

She was alone, but she knew every inch of the countryside, and but for this mischance of the plough she would have been well on her way.