"Over!" shouts Tom. "Here's the fresh spraint our side!"
Through the water splash squire, viscount, steward, and hounds, to the horror of a shoal of par, the only visible tenants of a pool, which, after a shower of rain, would be alive with trout. Where those trout are in the meanwhile is a mystery yet unsolved.
Over dances the little terrier, yapping furiously, and expending his superfluous energy by snapping right and left at the par.
"Hark to Musical! hark to Sweetlips! Down the stream?—No! the old girl has it; right up the bank!"
"How do, Doctor? How do, Major Campbell? Forward!—Forward!—Forward!" shouts Trebooze, glad to escape a longer parley, as with his spear in his left hand, he clutches at the overhanging boughs with his right, and swings himself up, with Peter, the huntsman, after him. Tom follows him; and why?
Because he does not like his looks. That bull-eye is red, and almost bursting; his cheeks are flushed, his lips blue, his hand shakes; and Tom's quick eye has already remarked, from a distance, over and above his new fussiness, a sudden shudder, a quick half-frightened glance behind him; and perceived, too, that the moment Musical gave tongue, he put the spirit-flask to his mouth.
Away go the hounds at score through tangled cover, their merry peal ringing from brake and brier, clashing against the rocks, moaning musically away through distant glens aloft.
Scoutbush and Tardrew "take down" the riverbed, followed by Campbell. It is in his way home; and though the Major has stuck many a pig, shot many a gaur, rhinoceros, and elephant, he disdains not, like a true sportsman, the less dangerous but more scientific excitement of an otter-hunt.
"Hark to the merry merry Christchurch bells! She's up by this time;— that don't sound like a drag now!" cries Tom, bursting desperately, with elbow-guarded visage, through the tangled scrub.
"What's the matter, Trebooze? No, thanks! 'Modest quenchers' won't improve the wind just now."