“I know nothing of any dreadful stories.”
“Mr. Mitchell, I beg you to be plain with me. Am I right in refusing to have anything to say to—a certain clerical neighbor of ours?”
“Mr. Denison, if my advice is worth anything, have nothing to do with any clerical neighbors.”
“Thank you, Mr. Mitchell, that is enough for me. I see you wish to steer clear of libel. But I understand your warning, and I thank you. Vernon Brander shall not enter my house again.”
He wished the colonist good-morning, and went back to his farm with a more satisfied conscience. His wife, then, had not been so far wrong in her estimate of the Vicar of St. Cuthbert’s, though her treatment might have been open to criticism. But Ned Mitchell looked after him with the tight-lipped smile of contempt with which he was always so ready.
“Does he really think a few mumbling words from him will turn that strong-willed lass, I wonder?” thought he.
And dismissing the subject with a short laugh of derision, his thoughts turned to his hounds, and to a plan which he was nourishing very near his heart.
That very day he resolved to put it into practice. In the early part of the afternoon, therefore, he strolled down to St. Cuthbert’s, found the churchyard gate securely fastened, and, making a circuit of the walls, discovered a point where it was of no very formidable height.
“I think my beauties could do that!” chuckled he to himself. And returning straight to his cottage, he remained within doors until the sun began to go down.
Then, going, as he now did without fear, into the room where the hounds, again ravenous with hunger, were yelping and savagely howling, he cowed them with a small whip, which he did not scruple to use cruelly, and securing the animals in a leash, left his little dwelling with them. The hounds were fierce, strong, and difficult to manage. Ned, who still limped in pain from the effects of the bite one of them had given him the night before, cursed them below his breath one moment and burst out into enthusiastic praises of them the next. He made his way with them direct to St. Cuthbert’s, going over the fields. It was growing dusk; the walk was a lonely one; he did not see a single human being as he made his way slowly along, surprised at the ever-increasing pain his wounded limb caused him.