“Where, then?”
“Following the hounds.”
“What! into that mob? No, that is not what I came for.”
At that moment Craig rode up.
“So glad,” he said, “to find you all here. Mount, gentlemen. Are you ready, Baby?”
“Ready, yes, an hour ago, Craig.”
They met horsemen and hounds not far away, and taking a bold détour over a rough and broken country, at the edge of a wood, the hounds found a “forester,” or old man kangaroo. The beast had a good start if he had taken the best advantage of it; but he failed to do so. He had hesitated several times; but the run was a fine one. A wilder, rougher, more dangerous ride Archie had never taken.
The beast was at bay before very long, and his resistance to the death was extraordinary.
They had many more rides before the day was over; and when they re-assembled in farmer Findlayson’s hospitable parlour, Archie was fain for once to own himself not only tired, but “dead beat.”
The dinner was what Harry called a splendid spread. Old Findlayson had been a gardener in his younger days in England, and his wife was a cook; and one of the results of this amalgamation was, dinners or breakfasts either, that had already made the Scotchman famous.