“Mr. Stangrave likes the vale better than the vale likes him.  I have fallen into two brooks following, Claude; to the delight of all the desperate Englishmen.”

“Oh!  You rode straight enough, sir!  You must pay for your fun in the vale:—­but then you have your fun.  But there were a good many falls the last ton minutes:  ground heavy, and pace awful; old rat-tail had enough to do to hold his own.  Saw one fellow ride bang into a pollard-willow, when there was an open gate close to him—­cut his cheek open, and lay; but some one said it was only Smith of Ewebury, so I rode on.”

“I hope you English showed more pity to your wounded friends in the Crimea,” quoth Stangrave, laughing, “I wanted to stop and pick him up:  but Mr. Armsworth would not hear of it.”

“Oh, sir, if it had been a stranger like you, half the field would have been round you in a minute:  but Smith don’t count—­he breaks his neck on purpose three days a week:—­by the by, Doctor, got a good story of him for you.  Suspected his keepers last month.  Slips out of bed at two in the morning; into his own covers, and blazes away for an hour.  Nobody comes.  Home to bed, and tries the same thing next night.  Not a soul comes near him.  Next morning has up keepers, watchers, beaters, the whole posse; and ’Now, you rascals!  I’ve been poaching my own covers two nights running, and you’ve been all drunk in bed.  There are your wages to the last penny; and vanish!  I’ll be my own keeper henceforth; and never let me see your faces again!”

The old Doctor laughed cheerily.  “Well:  but did you kill your fox?”

“All right:  but it was a burster,—­just what I always tell Mr. Stangrave.  Afternoon runs are good runs; pretty sure of an empty fox and a good scent after one o’clock.”

“Exactly,” answered a fresh voice from behind; “and fox-hunting is an epitome of human life.  You chop or lose your first two or three:  but keep up your pluck, and you’ll run into one before sun-down; and I seem to have run into a whole earthful!”

All looked round; for all knew that voice.

Yes!  There he was, in bodily flesh and blood; thin, sallow, bearded to the eyes, dressed in ragged sailor’s clothes:  but Tom himself.

Grace uttered a long, low, soft, half-laughing cry, full of the delicious agony of sudden relief; a cry as of a mother when her child is born; and then slipped from the room past the unheeding Tom, who had no eyes but for his father.  Straight up to the old man he went, took both his hands, and spoke in the old cheerful voice,—­

“Well, my dear old daddy!  So you seem to have expected me; and gathered, I suppose, all my friends to bid me welcome.  I’m afraid I have made you very anxious:  but it was not my fault; and I knew you would be certain I should come at last, eh?”

“My son! my son!  Let me feel whether thou be my very son Esau or not!” murmured the old man, finding half-playful expression in the words of Scripture, for feelings beyond his failing powers.