For a couple of hours they raced about across the downs, flushing covey after covey. Sometimes four or five hawks were in the air at once and it was thrilling to see them swoop down in arrowlike flight. They often missed at the first swoop, but when the grouse were flushed a second time they usually got them.
Di proved a fearless rider, sending her horse over the rough ground, jumping ditches and swerving suddenly as she followed her hawk in the chase. Rose rode a close second, but Ruth dropped back a little, unused to the side-saddle.
Di saw that she was tiring, and rode up to her, pulling the hood back over her bird’s handsome head.
“We’ve had enough,” she said. “Let’s ride back and leave these boys to work with their courtesy released from the necessity of waiting upon us.... A necessity that, as you see, weighs heavily on them,” and she gave an amused glance across the field, where her cousins were paying precious little attention to anything except the business in hand. “We’ll see if Maisy won’t give us a cup of tea and a few bannocks, which surely won’t come amiss after all this riding and slaughter.”
Taking a short cut, they soon brought up at the Hall again, and Di led them to a smaller, cosier room than the place where they had dined, where there were books and comfortable chairs and hangings on the walls.
A rosy-cheeked maid brought them the tea, which they took with a good appetite. Di amused them with tales of her rough cousins’ exploits, and she had just set them laughing by a description of how two of them had tried a race riding with their faces to the tails of their two horses, and how they were run away with, when a wild, shrill, multitudinous music suddenly burst in upon them.
“Great Jingoes, what’s that?” Rose exclaimed.
“It’s the bag-pipes—something’s afoot,” and Di sprang to her feet. “Come, we’ll see what’s to be seen.”
Running through a maze of passages the girls hastened toward that shrilling commotion, and once more found themselves in the great dining room. There a sight, crowded and picturesque, met them.
The room was full of Highlanders in all the glory of kilt and tartan, bonnet and plaid. Two pipers were marching back and forth at one end of the chamber with quick, short steps, blowing with all their skill. In the centre of a group stood a man of powerful appearance, with a shock of red hair showing under his bonnet. He looked toward the girls as they entered, and Rose saw that he had the glance of an eagle, so proud and wild it was.