Had Mary seen him and “Matchbox” a moment later, emerging separately from a hole in mid stream, her respect might not have prevented her from laughing, but the fact remains that the pair got across somehow.  At the top of the hill beyond the river Dinny Johnny saw the hounds for the first time.  They had checked on the road by the bridge, but now he heard them throwing their tongues as they hit the line again, the fatal line that was leading them to the covert.  Even at this moment, Mr. Denny could not restrain an admiration that would appear to most people ill-timed.

“Aren’t they going the hell of a docket!” he exclaimed fondly, “and good old Chantress leading the lot of them, the darling!  It’ll be a queer thing now, if I don’t get there in time!”

Blown though the pony was, he knew instinctively that he had not yet come to the end of her, and he drove her along at a canter until he reached a lane that encircled the covert, along which he would have to go to intercept the hounds.  As he jumped into it he was suddenly aware of a yelling crowd of men and boys, who seemed, with nightmare unexpectedness, to fill all the lane behind him.  He knew what they were there for, and oblivious of the lamentable absurdity of his appearance, he turned and roared out a defiance as he clattered at full speed down the stony lane.  It seemed like another and almost expected episode in the nightmare when he became aware of a barricade of stones, built across the road to a height of about four feet, with along the top of it—­raising it to what, on a fourteen hand pony, looked like impossibility—­the branch of a fir-tree, with all its bristling twigs left on it.

He heard the cry of the hounds clearly now; they were within a couple of fields of the covert.  Dinny Johnny drove his left spur into the little mare’s panting side, let go the crutch, took hold of her head in the way that is unmistakable, and faced her at the barricade.  As he did so a countryman sprang up at his right hand and struck furiously at him with a heavy potato spade.  The blow was aimed at Dinny Johnny, but the moment was miscalculated, and it fell on “Matchbox” instead.  The sharp blade gashed her hind quarter, but with a spring like a frightened deer she rose to the jump.  For one supreme moment Dinny Johnny thought she had cleared it, but at the next her hind legs had caught in the branch, and with a jerk that sent her rider flying over her head, she fell in a heap on the road.  Fortunately for Mr. Denny, he was a proficient in the art of falling, and though his hands were cut, and blood was streaming down his face, he was able to struggle up, and run on towards the cry of the hounds.  There was still time; panting and dizzy, and half-blinded with his own blood, he knew that there was still time, and he laboured on, heedless of everything but the hounds.  A high wall divided the covert from the lane, and he could see the gate that was the sole entrance to the wood on this side standing open.  It was an iron gate, very high, with close upright iron bars and Chantress was racing him to get there first, Chantress, with all the pack at her heels.