“Goarly is a great fool for his pains,” said the doctor.  “He has had a very fair offer made him, and, first or last, it’ll cost him forty pounds.”

“He has got it into his head,” said the landlord, “that he can sue Lord Rufford for his fences.  Lord Rufford is not answerable for his fences.”

“It’s the loss of crop he’s going for,” said Twentyman.

“How can there be pheasants to that amount in Dillsborough Wood,” continued the landlord, “when everybody knows that foxes breed there every year?  There isn’t a surer find for a fox in the whole county.  Everybody knows that Lord Rufford never lets his game stand in the way of foxes.”

Lord Rufford was Mr. Runciman’s great friend and patron and best customer, and not a word against Lord Rufford was allowed in that room, though elsewhere in Dillsborough ill-natured things were sometimes said of his lordship.  Then there came on that well-worn dispute among sportsmen, whether foxes and pheasants are or are not pleasant companions to each other.  Every one was agreed that, if not, then the pheasants should suffer, and that any country gentleman who allowed his gamekeeper to entrench on the privileges of foxes in order that pheasants might be more abundant, was a “brute” and a “beast,” and altogether unworthy to live in England.  Larry Twentyman and Ned Botsey expressed an opinion that pheasants were predominant in Dillsborough Wood, while Mr. Runciman, the doctor, and Harry Stubbings declared loudly that everything that foxes could desire was done for them in that Elysium of sport.

“We drew the wood blank last time we were there,” said Larry.  “Don’t you remember, Mr. Runciman, about the end of last March?”

“Of course I remember,” said the landlord.  “Just the end of the season, when two vixens had litters in the wood!  You don’t suppose Bean was going to let that old butcher, Tony, find a fox in Dillsborough at that time.”  Bean was his lordship’s head gamekeeper in that part of the country.  “How many foxes had we found there during the season?”

“Two or three,” suggested Botsey.

“Seven!” said the energetic landlord; “seven, including cub-hunting,—­and killed four!  If you kill four foxes out of an eighty-acre wood, and have two litters at the end of the season, I don’t think you have much to complain of.”

“If they all did as well as Lord Rufford, you’d have more foxes than you’d know what to do with,” said the doctor.

Then this branch of the conversation was ended by a bet of a new hat between Botsey and the landlord as to the finding of a fox in Dillsborough Wood when it should next be drawn; as to which, when the speculation was completed, Harry Stubbings offered Mr. Runciman ten shillings down for his side of the bargain.

But all this did not divert the general attention from the important matter of Goarly’s attack.  “Let it be how it will,” said Mr. Runciman, “a fellow like that should be put down.”  He did not address himself specially to Mr. Masters, but that gentleman felt that he was being talked at.