The first intimation Diogenes had that it was expected of him that he should walk home was when the car started and left him, mute and bewildered and bespattered with mud, in the road gazing after it. No word had been vouchsafed him, no look. From the silence and the absence of interest in himself he had been deluded into supposing that he was not held responsible for the evil that had been done; but with the disappearance of the car vague doubts disturbed him, and he started in a sour, halfhearted way to follow the car and face his destiny. Even had his intelligence been equal to grasping what that destiny was, so great is the force of habit that he would have returned inevitably to meet it.
Diogenes got back some time after the car, and was met at the entrance by one of the few men employed at the Hall. This person, who had apparently been waiting for him, fastened a lead to his collar and took up a gun which he had rested against a tree, seeming as though he too were bent on posing as a sportsman, which he was not, save in the humble capacity of cleaning his master’s guns.
“You come along with me, old fellow,” he said, and tried to look grim, but softened on meeting Diogenes’ inquiring eye. “Shame, I calls it,” he ejaculated in a voice of disgust. “Anyone might ’a’ made the mistake of taking that there for a rabbit. Blest if I rekernised it for a dog when I seed it first.”
He led Diogenes out through the gate and down the road towards a field. The gate of the field was troublesome to open. While he fumbled with the padlock, his gun resting against the gatepost for the greater freedom of his hands, a joyous bark from Diogenes, who previously had worn a surprisingly docile and depressed mien, as though aware of what was going forward which these preparations portended, caused him to desist from the business of unfastening the gate to look up. When he saw who it was whose hurrying figure Diogenes thus joyfully hailed, he did not trouble to go on with his job, but waited for Peggy to approach. She came up at a run, and caught at Diogenes’ lead, and, holding it, stared at the man.
“What were you going to do with him?” she asked, her accusing eyes going from his face to the gun, and from the gun back again to his face.
“Shoot ’im, miss,” he answered. “It’s the master’s orders.”
“Absurd!” cried Peggy angrily. “I won’t have it done.”
“Sorry, miss,” the man replied, looking at her with a mingling of doubt and submission in his glance. “But I’m afraid it’ll ’ave to be. Shoot ’im, without delay. Them’s my orders.”
“Well, you can’t obey them,” replied Peggy, as calmly as her agitation allowed, “because, you see, I won’t let you. You can’t shoot him while I hold him, can you?”
“No, miss,” he replied. “But it’s as much as my place is worth—”