“They can’t keep the brat there always, that’s one thing,” he said to himself, as he limped along.
He found the return journey over the fields more tedious than he—a strong, healthy man, used to bear great fatigues without any ill effect—could have thought possible. The hounds were growing every moment more troublesome, straining harder at the leash, snapping and yelping the while. The wound in his injured leg was beginning to smart and burn, the muscles were swelling most painfully, and long before he reached Rishton Hill every step was causing him acute agony. The last field he had to cross brought him out into the road almost opposite the farmyard gate of Rishton Hall. Leaning against the gate and stroking the shaggy head of a poor old mongrel which had attached itself to the farm since she had been there, was Olivia Denison. She looked very sad, and stared out at the fields and the grey hills beyond with a face out of which all the bright girlish vivacity seemed for the moment to have gone. She started and blushed on seeing Ned Mitchell, who had succeeded in reducing his unruly pets to something like submission, but whose temper had been by no means improved in the task.
“Oh!” she cried, running through the gate and coming fearlessly within the range of the leash, “are these the dogs I’ve heard about?”
“How should I know what you’ve heard?” snapped Ned. “But I know what you’ll feel in a minute if you come within reach of the brutes’ jaws.”
For answer to this speech, Olivia stooped and laid her hand with a firm touch on the head of the animal nearest to her. Whether he had been cowed by Ned’s course of treatment, or whether there was something peculiarly sympathetic to the animals in her bold manner of approaching them, the dog only gave an ungracious growl, but made no attempt to resent her advances more actively.
“And are these—bloodhounds?” she asked, almost with bated breath.
“Yes, that’s what they are,” answered Ned, as if he had been challenged.
Olivia’s breath came more quickly as, still looking down at the brutes, and even playing with the ears of one of them, she listened and evidently read the meaning of his tone.
“What have you got them for?” she asked, raising her head suddenly, and looking at him askance.
“I’ve got them to play sexton for me in St. Cuthbert’s churchyard; to dig up some bones there that were buried with less ceremony than they ought to have had.”