“Hunt him? Ho—ho! Look there.”
He pointed to the upper end of the hollow, which was shut in by a wall of terraced rock and cliff. But many a dark hole and crack on the face of this showed that the towering rampart was honeycombed by caves and labyrinthine galleries.
“How are you going to get him out of these?” went on old Hesketh. “Why, all the dogs in the world wouldn’t get him out. He’d only have to skip from one hole to another. Eh, Greenoak?” The latter nodded.
“Well, it’s abominably cruel all the same,” repeated Hazel as she turned away. “Aren’t I right, Mr Selmes?”
“A trap that doesn’t kill outright always is cruel,” answered the diplomatic Dick, whose last wish in the world was to disagree with her. “I know I’ve often thought it hard luck on the rabbits at home when they got into one—poor little beggars.”
“Do you know,” she went on, jumping from one subject to another, “I can’t tell you how glad I am to have had the opportunity of meeting Mr Greenoak. What a splendid man he is! Isn’t he?”
“Rather. He’s a thundering good old chap.”
Hazel lifted an eyebrow.
“Old! But you surely don’t call him old. Why, he’s just in his prime. Oh, I see, you mean it as a term of comradeship,” she added.
“Er—yes. That was it,” agreed Dick, upon whose mind a very unwelcome qualm was beginning to force itself.