ash plant, nor the stalks of rag-wort, torn from the potato ridges, with which the countrymen flagellated her from behind, were likely to make her change her mind.  Farther back still were a few specks, motionless apparently, but representing, as Muriel was well aware, the speeding indignant forms of those Miss Purcells who had got left.  As for Sir Thomas—­well, it was no good going to meet the devil half-way! was the filial reflection; of Sir Thomas’s second daughter, as, with a clatter of stones, she and the colt dropped into a road, and charged on over the bank on the other side, the colt leaving a hind leg behind him in it, and sending thereby a clod of earth flying into the stranger’s face.  The stranger only laughed, and catching hold of the much enduring hireling he drove him level with the colt, and lifted him over the ensuing bank and gripe in a way subsequently described by Jerry as having “covered acres”.

But the old fox’s hitherto straight neck was getting a twist in it.  Possibly he had summered himself rather too well, and found himself a little short of training for the point that he had first fixed on.  At all events, he swung steadily round, and headed for the lower end of the long belt of Liss Cranny Wood; and, as he and his pursuers so headed, Retributive Justice, mounted on a large brown horse, very red in the face, and followed by a string of hounds and daughters, galloped steadily toward the returning sinners.

It is probably superfluous to reproduce for sporting readers the exact terms in which an infuriated master of hounds reproves an erring flock.  Sir Thomas, even under ordinary circumstances, had a stirring gift of invective.  It was currently reported that after each day’s hunting Lady Purcell made a house-to-house visitation of conciliation to all subscribers of five pounds and upwards.  On this occasion the Master, having ordered his two daughters home without an instant’s delay, proceeded to a satiric appreciation of the situation at large and in detail, with general reflections as to the advantage to tailors of sticking to their own trade, and direct references of so pointed a character to the mental abilities of the third delinquent, that that gentleman’s self-control became unequal to further strain, and he also retired abruptly from the scene.

Nora and Muriel meanwhile pursued their humbled, but unrepentant, way home.  It was blowing as hard as ever.  Muriel’s hair had only been saved from complete overthrow by two hair-pins yielded, with pelican-like devotion, by a sister.  Nora had lost the Tam-o’-Shanter, and had torn her blue serge skirt.  The foxy mare had cast a shoe, and the colt was unaffectedly done.

“He’s mad for a drink!” said Muriel, as he strained towards the side of the bog road, against which the waters of a small lake, swollen by the recent rains, were washing in little waves under the lash of the wind—­“I think I’ll let him just wet his mouth.”