The huntsman came up, and at last Mr. Fairlawn also, and considered it to be their duty to pick up Dick, whose breath was knocked out of him by the weight of Joshua Thoroughbung, and the Puckeridge side felt it to be necessary to give their aid to the valiant brewer.  There was then no more attempt to draw the covert.  Each general in gloomy silence took off his forces, and each afterward deemed that the victory was his.  Dick swore, when brought to himself, that one of his hounds had gone in, whereas Squire ’Arkaway “had swore most ’orrid oaths that no ’Itchiner ’ound should ever live to put his nose in.  One of ’is ’ounds ’ad, and Squire ’Arkaway would have to be—­” Well, Dick declared that he would not say what would happen to Mr. Harkaway.

CHAPTER XXIX.

RIDING HOME.

The two old gentlemen rode away, each in his own direction, in gloomy silence.  Not a word was said by either of them, even to one of his own followers.  It was nearly twenty miles to Mr. Harkaway’s house, and along the entire twenty miles he rode silent.  “He’s in an awful passion,” said Thoroughbung; “he can’t speak from anger.”  But, to tell the truth, Mr. Harkaway was ashamed of himself.  He was an old gentleman, between seventy and eighty, who was supposed to go out for his amusement, and had allowed himself to be betrayed into most unseemly language.  What though the hound had not “shown a line?” Was it necessary that he, at his time of life, should fight on the road for the maintenance of a trifling right of sport.  But yet there came upon him from time to time a sense of the deep injury done to him.  That man Fairlawn, that blackguard, that creature of all others the farthest removed from a gentleman, had declared that in his, Mr. Harkaway’s teeth, he would draw his, Mr. Harkaway’s covert!  Then he would urge on his old horse, and gnash his teeth; and then, again, he would be ashamed.  “Tantaene animis coelestibus irae?”

But Thoroughbung rode home high in spirits, very proud, and conscious of having done good work.  He was always anxious to stand well with the hunt generally, and was aware that he had now distinguished himself.  Harry Annesley was on one side of him, and on the other rode Mr. Florin, the banker.  “He’s an abominable liar!” said Thoroughbung, “a wicked, wretched liar!” He was alluding to the Hitchiner’s whip, whom in his wrath he had nearly sent to another world.  “He says that one of his hounds got into the covert, but I was there and saw it all.  Not a nose was over the little bank which runs between the field and the covert.”

“You must have seen a hound if he had been there,” said the banker.

“I was as cool as a cucumber, and could count the hounds he had with him.  There were three of them.  A big black-spotted bitch was leading, the one that I nearly fell upon.  When the man went down the hound stopped, not knowing what was expected of him.  How should he?  The man would have been in the covert, but, by George!  I managed to stop him.”