ardour to watch different sides of the covert.  This, during the next hour, they had ample opportunities for doing.  After the first outburst of joy from the hounds on discovering that there were rabbits in the covert, and after the retirement of the rabbits to their burrows on the companion discovery that there were hounds in it, a silence, broken only by the far-away prattle of the lady bicyclists on the road, fell round Freddy Alexander.  He bore it as long as he could, cheering with faltering whoops the invisible and unresponsive pack, and wondering what on earth huntsmen were expected to do on such occasions; then, filled with that horrid conviction which assails the lonely watcher, that the hounds have slipped away at the far side, he put spurs to Mayboy, and cantered down the long flank of the covert to find some one or something.  Nothing had happened on the north side, at all events, for there was the faithful Taylour, pirouetting on his hill-top in the eye of the wind.  Two fields more (in one of which he caught his first sight of any of the hounds, in the shape of Ruby, carefully rolling on a dead crow), and then, under the lee of a high bank, he came upon Patsey Crimmeen, the farmers, and the country boys, absorbed in the contemplation of a fight between Tiger, the butcher’s brindled cur, and Watty, the kennel terrier.

The manner in which Mr. Alexander dispersed this entertainment showed that he was already equipped with one important qualification of a Master of Hounds—­a temper laid on like gas, ready to blaze at a moment’s notice.  He pitched himself off his horse and scrambled over the bank into the covert in search of his hounds.  He pushed his way through briars and furze-bushes, and suddenly, near the middle of the wood, he caught sight of them.  They were in a small group, they were very quiet and very busy.  As a matter of fact they were engaged in eating a dead sheep.

After this episode, there ensued a long and disconsolate period of wandering from one bleak hillside to another, at the bidding of various informants, in search of apocryphal foxes, slaughterers of flocks of equally apocryphal geese and turkeys—­such a day as is discreetly ignored in all hunting annals, and, like the easterly wind that is its parent, is neither good for man nor beast.

By half-past three hope had died, even in the sanguine bosoms of the Master and Mr. Taylour.  Two of the farmers had disappeared, and the lady bicyclists, with faces lavender blue from waiting at various windy cross roads, had long since fled away to lunch.  Two of the hounds were limping; all, judging by their expressions, were on the verge of tears.  Patsey’s black mare had lost two shoes; Mr. Taylour’s pony had ceased to pull, and was too dispirited even to try to kick the hounds, and the country boys had dwindled to four.  There had come a time when Mr. Taylour had sunk so low as to suggest that a drag should be run with the assistance of the ferret’s bag, a scheme only frustrated by the regrettable fact that the ferret and its owner had gone home.