The drizzling rain struck cold on my bare cheek. Kate’s head was up, her ears erect, her nostrils dilated, and she trembled in every limb.
“Bother the rats for to-day!” exclaimed my mercurial charioteer. “What say you, Softly? Let’s go hunting instead. The mare can jump like fun, and the trap can go anywhere. Open the gate, there’s a good chap! In the next field but one there’s a bridle-road takes us right away to Tangler’s Copse.”
I descended from the tall conveyance to do his bidding, dirtying my gloves, wetting my feet, and daubing my coat with mud in the process; but there is a condition of the human mind, at which it ceases to be a free agent, and I had arrived at that negative state, when we quitted the turnpike-road. Once more climbing with difficulty to my seat, I found myself bumping over the ridge-and-furrow of a large grass-field, and, straining my eyes to find an egress, became aware that it was the Jovial’s intention to drive through a sort of gap in the fence, where the ditch had been partially filled up. It was now time to protest, which I did loudly and energetically; but my objections were too late. “Sit tight, Softly! Gently, Kate!” exclaimed Plumtree in a breath; and with a bump, a jerk, and a most astounding bang against the splash-board, we were safe over, and careering along the next field.
I was glad to see a gate led out of this enclosure. I would have climbed up and down those red wheels, fifty times, rather than repeat the process we had just now accomplished.
Crafty Kate, shamelessly belying the first half of her name, seemed to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, swinging along at a very respectable pace, with her ears cocked, her head and tail both up, and an obvious determination to join the chase with as little delay as possible. The vehicle sprang and jerked, and swung from side to side; the wheels bespattered us from head to foot with mud: the splash-board alone prevented us from shooting out, over the mare’s back. No one who has ever tried it will wish to repeat the uncomfortable diversion of galloping in a gig.
Fortunately the rain began to cease, the clouds cleared away, and a burst of winter sunshine enabled us to see as far as the flatness of the country would allow.
The Jovial pulled up short, not without considerable difficulty. “They’re away, by all that’s lucky,” exclaimed he, shifting his reins into his whip-hand, that he might give me a congratulatory slap on the back, which knocked all the breath out of my body. “Never knew a fox to leave Tangler’s Copse before, and bearing right down upon us too, or I’m a Scotchman! There’s the fox, by jingo! Hold your tongue, Softly!”
The injunction was quite unnecessary, for I am not one of the halloaing tribe. Moreover, my handkerchief was pulled up to my nose, and I did not myself see the cause of my companion’s excitement. He was right, however; presently two or three couple of hounds straggled into the field adjoining that in which we were stationed, ran to and fro along the hedge-side, put their noses down, threw their tongues, and followed by the whole pack, streamed across the pasture on the line of their prey.
It was great fun, and a new sensation, to watch the progress of the field, as one sat an unoccupied spectator, perched in a thing like a tea-tray on a pair of tall red wheels. I can quite understand the pleasure an old gentleman has, who rides quietly out on his cob, to see them “find and go away.”
A couple of simultaneous crashes in the fence announced the arrival in the same field with the hounds of the Earl himself, and a hard-riding gentleman with moustaches, a visitor at the castle. Fifty yards or so to their right again, and somewhat nearer the pack, a beautiful grey horse, having been quietly trotted up the hard pathway that led to it, landed in artistic form over a hog-backed stile with a foot-board, ridden by an elegant figure in a lady’s habit, of whom it was impossible at that distance to recognise the face. Happening, however, to glance at my companion’s countenance (who caught his breath by the way, during this performance), and observing it to become a deep crimson, my surmises that the daring Amazon was none other than Miss Merlin were to a certain extent corroborated.