The hounds were close upon him.  Not until they were close had he quitted his hide-hole in the stream, where for the last time he had broken the scent for them.  This was the third stream he had used since they had tufted him out of the wood where through the summer he had lorded it, thirty-five miles away; and each stream had helped him, and had failed him in the end.  He had weakened the scent over stony ridges, checked it through dense brakes of gorse, fouled and baffled it by charging through herds of cattle and groups of hinds of his own race couching or pasturing with their calves; for the stag-hunting season was drawing close to its end, and in a few weeks it would be the hinds’ turn.  But the hinds knew that their peril was not yet, and, being as selfish as he, they had helped him but little or not at all.  And now his hour was near.

For even while the children gazed after him the hounds came streaming down the coombe in a flood, with a man on a grey horse close behind them; and behind him, but with a gap between, a straggling line of riders broke into sight, some scarlet-coated, others in black or in tweeds.  The man on the grey horse shouted up the hill to Roger, who had left his team and was running.  Away over the crest above him two labourers hove in sight, these also running at full speed.  And all—­ hounds, horses, men—­were pouring down the coombe towards the beach.

The hounds swept down in a mass so solid and compact that Tilda dragged Arthur Miles into the doorway, fearful of being swept by them over the edge of the fall.  Past the cottage they streamed, down over the grassy cliff, and across the beach.  ’Dolph, barking furiously by the edge of the waves, was caught and borne down by the first line of them—­borne down and rolled over into the water with no more ceremony than if he had been a log.  They did not deign to hurt him, but passed on swimming, and he found his feet and emerged behind them, sneezing and shaking himself and looking a fool.  He was, as we know, sensitive about looking a fool; but just then no one had time to laugh at him.

The riders had arrived, and reined up, crowding the ledge before the cottage, and the most of them stood raising themselves in their stirrups, gazing after the stag that now, with little more than his antlers visible like a bleached bough moving on the flood, swam strongly out into the golden mist still cloaking the Island.  Moment by moment he out-distanced the wedge-shaped ripple where the heads of the tired pack bobbed in pursuit; for here, as always in water, the deer held the advantage, being able to float and rest at will while the hound must always ply his forelegs or sink.  The huntsman, however, judged it impossible that he could reach Holmness.  He and a dozen gentlemen had dismounted, clambered down beside the fall, and were dragging the boat down the beach to launch her, when Roger and the two labourers burst through the throng and took charge; since to recover