Away go the hounds at score through tangled cover, their merry peal ringing from brake and brier, clashing against the rocks, moaning musically away through distant glens aloft.

Scoutbush and Tardrew “take down” the riverbed, followed by Campbell.  It is in his way home; and though the Major has stuck many a pig, shot many a gaur, rhinoceros, and elephant, he disdains not, like a true sportsman, the less dangerous but more scientific excitement of an otter-hunt.

“Hark to the merry merry Christchurch bells!  She’s up by this time;—­ that don’t sound like a drag now!” cries Tom, bursting desperately, with elbow-guarded visage, through the tangled scrub.

“What’s the matter, Trebooze?  No, thanks!  ‘Modest quenchers’ won’t improve the wind just now.”

For Trebooze has halted, panting and bathed in perspiration; has been at the brandy flask again; and now offers Tom a “quencher,” as he calls it.

“As you like,” says Trebooze, sulkily, having meant it as a token of reconciliation, and pushes on.

They are now upon a little open meadow, girdled by green walls of wood; and along the river-bank the hounds are fairly racing.  Tom and Peter hold on; Trebooze slackens.

“Your master don’t look right this morning, Peter.”

Peter lifts his hand to his mouth, to signify the habit of drinking; and then shakes it in a melancholy fashion, to signify that the said habit has reached a lamentable and desperate point.

Tom looks back.  Trebooze has pulled up, and is walking, wiping still at his face.  The hounds have overrun the scent, and are back again, flemishing about the plashed fence on the river brink.

“Over! over! over!” shouts Peter, tumbling over the fence into the stream, and staggering across.

Trebooze comes up to it, tries to scramble over, mutters something, and sits down astride of a bough.

“You are not well, Squire?”

“Well as ever I was in my life! only a little sick—­have been several times lately; couldn’t sleep either—­haven’t slept an hour this week.—­ Don’t know what it is.”

“What ducks of hounds those are!” says Tom, trying, for ulterior purposes, to ingratiate himself.  “How they are working there all by themselves, like so many human beings.  Perfect!”

“Yes—­don’t want us—­may as well sit here a minute.  Awfully hot, eh?  What a splendid creature that Miss St. Just is!  I say, Peter!”

“Yes, sir,” shouts Peter, from the other side.

“Those hounds ain’t right!” with an oath.

“Not right, sir?”

“Didn’t I tell you?—­five couple and a half—­no, five couple—­no, six.  Hang it!  I can’t see, I think!  How many hounds did I tell you to bring out?”

“Five couple, sir.”

“Then ... why did you bring out that other?”

“Which other?” shouts Peter, while Thurnall eyes Trebooze keenly.

“Why that!  He’s none o’ mine!  Nasty black cur, how did he get here?”