THE BLACK HARE.
It was a glorious breezy November morning; the sturdy oaks alone held on to the last brown remnants of their summer finery; all the rest of the trees in the vast sheets of wood which clothed the lower parts of the downs overhanging Ravenshoe had changed the bright colours of autumn for the duller, but not less beautiful, browns and purples of winter. Below, in the park, the deer were feeding among the yellow fern brakes, and the rabbits were basking and hopping in the narrow patches of slanting sunlight, which streamed through the leafless trees. Aloft, on the hill, the valiant blackcock led out his wives and family from the whortle-grown rocks, to flaunt his plumage in the warmest corner beneath the Tor.
And the Tors, too, how they hung aloft above the brown heather, which was relieved here and there by patches of dead, brown, king-fern; hung aloft like brilliant, clearly-defined crystals, with such mighty breadths of light and shadow as Sir Charles Barry never could accomplish, though he had Westminster Abbey to look at every day.
Up past a narrow sheep-path, where the short grass faded on the one side into feathery broom, and on the other into brown heather and grey stone, under the shadow of the Tor which lay nearest to Ravenshoe, and overhung those dark woods in which we saw Densil just now walking with his old hound; there was grouped, on the morning after the day of Charles's arrival, a happy party, every one of whom is already known to the reader. Of which circumstance I, the writer, am most especially glad. For I am already as tired of introducing new people to you as my lord chamberlain must be of presenting strangers to her Majesty at a levée.
Densil first, on a grey cob, looking very old and feeble, straining his eyes up the glen whither Charles, and James, the old keeper, had gone with the greyhounds. At his rein stood William, whom we knew at Oxford. Beside the old man sat Mary on her pony, looking so radiant and happy, that, even if there had been no glorious autumn sun overhead, one glance at her face would have made the dullest landscape in Lancashire look bright. Last, not least, the good Father Tiernay, who sat on his horse, hatless, radiant, scratching his tonsure.
"And so you're determined to back the blue dog, Miss Mary," said he.
"I have already betted a pair of gloves with Charles, Mr. Tiernay," said Mary, "and I will be rash enough to do so with you. Ruin is the quickest striker we have ever bred."
"I know it; they all say so," said the priest; "but come, I must have a bet on the course. I will back Lightning."
"Lightning is the quicker dog," said Densil; "but Ruin! you will see him lie behind the other dog all the run, and strike the hare at last. Father Mackworth, a good judge of a dog, always backs him against the kennel."