“You young dog!” he roared; “how dare you come after my rabbits!”
“Excuse me,” said the Doctor.
“Yes, yes, of course. Well, Doctor Browne, my keeper and I were out taking a look round at the young pheasants in their coops last evening, when we took these confounded young dogs red-handed, ferreting rabbits with that scoundrelly poaching vagabond you have taken into your service, when nobody else would give him a job.”
“Ah, yes,” said the Doctor blandly, “you complained of my employing that man, Sir Hawkhurst. The fact is, he came to me, saying that he had been cruelly misjudged, that he was half starved, and begged me to give him a job. I did so, to give him another chance. Of course, after this, and the fact that my gardener gives him a very bad character and seems much dissatisfied, I shall not employ him again.”
“And very wisely,” said the old officer. “Well, sir, that’s all I’ve got to say. That is my evidence.”
“Thank you,” said the Doctor magisterially. “And you, my good man, were with your master, and saw the boys—my boys—engaged there?”
“Yes, sir,” said Bob Hopley, touching the black curls over his forehead. “Rabbit and ferret produced.”
As he spoke, he pulled out of one big pocket the dead rabbit, and out of the other the twining and writhing ferret, at which the Doctor gazed with interest through his gold spectacles.
“Singular animal!” said the Doctor, “specially designed by nature for threading its way through the narrow labyrinthine burrows of the rabbit and the rat.”