I explained that he was French.
"You wouldn't know what these foreigners might be up to," returned Mr. Knox, quite unconvinced. "I'm going on now——"
He too moved expeditiously out of the danger zone.
The Field straggled down the avenue, and progressed over tracts of tussocky grass in the wake of the hounds, towards the plantation that was the first draw. The Keeper was outside the wood, with the assurance that there was a score of foxes in it, and that they had the country ate.
"Maybe they'll eat the hounds, so," said Flurry. "Let you all stay outside. You can be talking French now for a bit——"
I looked round to see who were availing themselves of this permission. The Count had by this time been introduced to Miss Larkie McRory; Philippa was apparently acting as interpreter, and Miss McRory was showing no disposition to close the interview. The Field had withdrawn, and had formed itself into a committee-meeting on the Count.
Miss Larkie McRory.
It was warm and sunny in the shelter of the wood. Although the time was November there were still green leaves on some of the trees; it was a steamy day after a wet night, and I thought to myself that if the hounds did run—Here came a challenge from the wood, answered multitudinously, and the next minute they were driving through the laurels towards the entrance gates, with a cry that stimulated even the many-wintered Daniel to capers quite unbefitting his time of life, or mine. The Castle Knox demesne is a large one, and being surrounded by a prohibitively high and coped wall, it is easier to find a fox there than to get away with one. Mighty galloping on the avenues followed, with interludes in the big demesne fields, where every gate had been considerately left open, and in which every horse with any pretensions to savoir faire stiffened his neck, and put up his back, and pulled. The hounds, a choir invisible, carried their music on through the plantations, with whimpering, scurrying pauses, with strophe and anti-strophe of soprano and bass. Sometimes the cry bore away to the demesne wall, and some one would shout "They're away!" and the question of the Front Gate versus the Western Gate would divide us like a sword. Twice, in the undergrowth, above the sunk fence that separated us from the wood, the quick, composed face of the fox showed itself; at last, when things were getting too hot in the covert, he sprang like a cat over the ditch, and flitted across the park with that gliding gait that dissimulates its own speed, while I and my fellows offered a painful example of the discordance of the human voice when compared with that of the hound, and five or six couple pitched themselves out of the wood and stretched away over the grass.