The munching of cattle was audible close at hand, a munching that was sometimes interrupted by awful snorts.
"Perhaps it's only the mist that makes them do that," John tried to assure himself. "It seems very imprudent to leave valuable cows out of doors on a damp night like this."
There was a sound of heavy bodies moving suddenly in unison.
"They've heard me," thought John, hopelessly. "I wish to goodness I knew something about cows. I really must get the subject up. Of course, they may be frightened of me. Good heavens, they're all snorting now. Probably the best thing to do is to keep on calmly walking; most animals are susceptible to human indifference. What a little fool that nephew of mine was to shoot at them this afternoon. I'm hanged if he deserves his toboggan."
The lights of Ambles stained the mist in front; John ran the last fifty yards, threw himself over the iron railings, and stood panting upon his own lawn. In the distance could be heard the confused thudding of hoofs dying away toward the far end of the twenty-acre meadow.
"I evidently frightened them," John thought.
A few minutes later he was calling down from the landing outside his bedroom that it was time for presents. In the first brief moment of intoxication that had succeeded his defeat of the cattle John had seriously contemplated tobogganing downstairs himself in order to "surprise the kids" as he put it. But from his landing the staircase looked all wrong for such an experiment and he walked the toboggan down, which lamplight appeared to him a typical product of the bear-haunted mountains of Canada.
Everybody was waiting for him in the drawing-room; everybody was flatteringly enthusiastic about the toboggan and seemed anxious to make it at home in such strange surroundings; nobody failed to point out to the lucky boy the extreme kindness of his uncle in bringing back such a wonderful present all the way from America—indeed one almost had the impression that John must often have had to wake up and feed it in the night.
"The trouble you must have taken," Hilda exclaimed.
"Yes, I did take a good deal of trouble," John admitted. After all, so he had—a damned sight more trouble than any one there suspected.