I reached the walls; there was an open doorway in them through which I fled, to find myself in a big garden.  Two gardeners saw me and shouted loudly.  I flew on through some other doors, through a yard, and into a passage where I met a woman carrying a pail, who shrieked and fell on to her back.  I jumped over her and got into a big room, where was a long table covered with white on which were all sorts of things that I suppose men eat.  Out of that room I went into yet another, where a fat woman with a hooked nose was seated holding something white in front of her.  I bolted under the thing on which she was seated and lay there.  She saw me come and began to shriek also, and presently a most terrible noise arose outside.

All the spotted dogs were in the house, baying and barking, and everybody was yelling.  Then for a minute the dogs stopped their clamour, and I heard a great clatter of things breaking and of teeth crunching and of the Red-faced Man shouting—­

“Those cursed brutes are eating the hunt lunch.  Get them out, Jerry, you idiot!  Get them out!  Great heavens! what’s the matter with her Ladyship?  Is any one murdering her?”

I suppose that they couldn’t get them out, or at least when they did they all came into the other room where I was under the seat on which the fat woman was now standing.

“What is it, mother?” I heard Tom say.

“An animal!” she screamed.  “An animal under the sofa!”

“All right,” he said, “that’s only the hare.  Here, hounds, out with her, hounds!”

The dogs rushed about, some of them with great lumps of food still in their mouths.  But they were confused, and all went into the wrong places.  Everything began to fall with dreadful crashes, the fat woman shrieked piercingly, and her shriek was—­

“China!  Oh! my china-a.  John, you wretch!  Help!  Help!  Help!”

To which the Red-faced Man roared in answer—­

“Don’t be an infernal fool, Eliza-a.  I say, don’t be such an infernal fool.”

Also there were lots of other noises that I cannot remember, except one which a dog made.

This silly dog had thrust its head up the hole over a fire such as the stops make outside the coverts when men are going to shoot, either to hide something or to look for me there.  When it came down again because the Red-faced Man kicked it, the dog put its paws into the fire and pulled it all out over the floor.  Also it howled very beautifully.  Just then another hound, that one which generally led the pack, began to sniff about near me and finally poked its nose under the stuff which hid me.

It jumped back and bayed, whereon I jumped out the other side.  Tom made a rush at me and knocked the fat woman off the thing she was standing on, so that she fell among the dogs, which covered her up and began to sniff her all over.  Flying from Tom I found myself in front of something filmy, beyond which I saw grass.  It looked suspicious, but as nothing in the world could be so bad as Tom, no, not even his dogs, I jumped at it.