On leaving the door it became painfully apparent that Crafty Kate was in a condition of excitement, not to say insubordination, which boded untoward results. Passing between the lines of dilapidated houses that constitute the little village of Soakington, she piaffed and curvetted, and tucked her head in, and hoisted her great angular quarters, in a manner calculated to excite the admiration of all beholders—limited in the present instance to a lame duck, and two boys playing truant from school; but when we emerged on the smooth expanse of the Waterborough road, stimulated by the love of approbation, or urged by a morbid anxiety to get home, the mare took the bit in her teeth, and very nearly made a bolt of it. I confess I clung to the rail that ran round the seat, thankful even for that frail support, and notwithstanding the slight hold it afforded me, narrowly escaped being dashed out, as we turned with fearful rapidity, and entirely on one wheel, like a skater doing the outside edge, up a lane diverging at right angles from the thoroughfare along which we had been bowling at such a pace.
It was evident, however, by Crafty Kate’s demeanour, that this was not the way home. She stopped dead short, stuck her forelegs out, and began nodding her head in that ominous manner, which denotes a determination to fight to the last. “Sit tight, Softly!” exclaimed the Jovial, with a fiendish laugh, as though this had been part of a programme devised for my special entertainment. “Sit tight! whilst I give my lady a taste of the silk!” and without further parley he pulled the whip from its bucket, and commenced a course of punishment on the mare’s sides, which produced no further result than that of causing her to back faster and faster towards the ditch; the tall red wheels hovered on its very brink, when a bright idea flashed across the charioteer’s mind. “Give us a blast of the tin, Softly,” said he, continuing, nevertheless, a vigorous application of the whipcord, “and let us see if your blasting is not more musical than mine!”
I am no performer, I candidly admit, on a trumpet of any description; but a desperate crisis demands a desperate remedy, and seizing the long coach-horn I performed such a solo upon it as has probably never been heard before, or since. “The Jovial” left off flagellating, and laughed till he cried. The mare laid her ears down into her poll, tucked her tail close to her quarters, and went off at score. Completely blown by my exertions, we had gone nearly a mile ere I returned the horn to its case, and found breath to speak.
“But is this the shortest way to The Ashes?” said I, striving by the aid of a “Vesuvian” to relight my cigar, which had gone out in the panic. “I thought we kept straight along the high-road to the turnpike, and then took the first turning to the——”
“O, bother The Ashes;” returned my mercurial companion. “We shall get there quite soon enough. Besides, the governor never shows till feeding-time; busy about the farm you know, mud-larking as I call it. No! no! if you want to see some fun, I’ll show you a game. We’ll just trot down to Joe Lambswool’s, at the World’s End, about two miles further on, and if you do care for sport, I can promise you a real treat. He’s going to pull down the old barn to-day; hasn’t been touched, I dare say, for two hundred years. Talk of rats! why, it’s swarming with them, as big as pole-cats pretty nigh, and twice as savage. He’s got a dawg as I want to see tried, quite a little ’un, what you would call a toy-dawg, you know; but they tell me he’ll tackle to anything alive, and knows how to kill a cat. If I like him I’ll buy him; and we’ll give old Brimstone a treat into the bargain,” added my amiable entertainer, looking back at the bull-terrier, who was toiling behind us, bespattered with mud, his tail lowered, his tongue out, and a villanous expression of sullenness and ferocity stamped on his round massive head.
“I should like it excessively,” I replied, with an inward shudder, belying, most uncomfortably, my unqualified expressions of delight, and the Jovial, turning on me a look of astonished approval, made a queer noise through his teeth, that started Crafty Kate incontinently into a canter.
“Well! I’m in for it now!” was my mental soliloquy, as we went whirling past the dripping trees and hedges with increasing rapidity. “How could I ever be induced to blunder into such a trap as this? A wet day; a dangerous drive; a pot-house gathering, and an afternoon spent in a tumble-down barn, full of draughts I make no doubt, and by no means water-tight; watching for rats, animals of which I have the greatest horror, and circumventing the same by means of ferrets—creatures if possible more disgusting to me than their prey—all because I hadn’t nerve to say ‘No.’ And not a chance now of seeing Miss Merlin when she comes home from hunting! Softly! this is a day’s penance. You must get through it as you best can!”
A rescue, however, when I least expected it, was proposed for me by a kind fortune, to snatch me from the ratting part of my discomforts. The lane down which we were bowling, though of considerable length, was not that proverbial one in which there is no turning. On reaching an angle by a sign-post, the Jovial pulled up, with great animation displayed on his broad white face.
“I can hear ’em running in Tangler’s Copse, as plain as can be,” said he, putting up his hand in the air, and cocking his head on one side to listen. Tangler’s Copse, be it observed, was a straggling woodland in the Castle-Cropper country, from which it was always difficult, and generally impossible, to force a fox into the open. “Listen, Softly!” he continued, with increasing excitement; “I’m blessed if that isn’t the horn! See, Kate hears it too.”
I am not gifted with extraordinary fineness of ear, particularly when well wrapped up on a rainy day; so I turned down the collar of my greatcoat, and took off my shawl-handkerchief to listen. There was no doubt we were in the vicinity of hounds; I could hear them distinctly, running as it seemed with a good scent, and cheered by occasional blasts on the horn.