“Did he put in the hounds yit?”

“He did,” said another voice, “he put them in the soud-aisht side; they’ll be apt to get it soon.”

“Get what?” thought Dinny Johnny, all his bristles rising in wrath as the idea of a drag came to him.

“There! they’re noising now!” said the first voice, while a whimper or two came from far back in the wood.  “Maybe there’ll not be so much chat out o’ thim afther once they’ll git to Madore!”

“’Twas a pity Scanlan wouldn’t put the mate in here and have done with it,” said the second voice.  “Owld Sta’ll niver let them run a dhrag.”

“Yirrah, what dhrag man!  ’Twas the fox himself they had, and he cut open to make a good thrail, and the way Scanlan laid it the devil himself wouldn’t know ’twas a dhrag, and they have little Danny Casey below to screech he seen the fox—­”

At the same instant the whimpers swelled into a far-away chorus, that grew each moment fainter and more faint.  Much as Mr. Denny desired to undertake the capture of the imparters of these interesting facts, he knew that he had now no time to attempt it, and, with a shout to Mary, he started the colt at full gallop up the rough hillside, round the covert, while the grey pony scuttled after him as nimbly as a rabbit.  The colt seemed to realise the stress of the occasion, and jumped steadily enough; but the last fence on to the road was too much for his nerves, and, having swerved from it with discomposing abruptness, he fell to his wonted tactics of rearing and backing.

Mr. Denny permitted himself one minute in which to establish the fruitlessness of spurs, whip and blasphemy in this emergency, and then, descending to his own legs, he climbed over the fence into the road and ran as fast as boots and tops would let him towards the point whence the cry of the hounds was coming, ever more and more faintly.  In a moment or two he returned, out of breath, to where the faithful Mary awaited him.

“It’s no good, Mary,” he said, wiping the perspiration from his forehead; “they’re running like blazes to the south along through the furze.  I suppose the devils took it that way to humbug your father, and then they’ll turn for the bridge and run into Madore; and there’s the end of the hounds.”

Mary, who regarded the hounds as the chief, if not the only, object of existence, looked at him with scared eyes, while the colour died out of her round cheeks.

“Will they be poisoned, Mr. Denny?” she gasped.

“Every man jack of them, if your father doesn’t twig it’s a drag, and whip ’em off,” replied Mr. Denny, with grim brevity.

“Couldn’t we catch them up?” cried Mary, almost incoherent from excitement and horror.

“They’ve gone half-a-mile by this, and that brute,” this with an eye of concentrated hatred at the colt, “won’t jump a broom-stick.”

“But let me try,” urged Mary, maddened by the assumption of masculine calm which Mr. Denny’s despair had taken on; “or—­oh, Mr. Denny, if you rode ‘Matchbox’ yourself straight to Madore across the river, you’d be in time to whip them off!”