“Amen, to that.”
“Now, what do you advise? When I was in debt, you said: ‘Tackle him at once!’ What do you say now?”
Fishpingle got up, and began to pace the floor, a trick of the Squire’s when much perturbed. Lionel appraised that perturbation too lightly. He said gaily:
“You and I must downscramble Squire.”
Fishpingle stood still.
“And her little ladyship?”
“I deal with her to-day, out hunting. We are good friends. So far as she is concerned, my hands are clean. She has stayed on for this hunt. She leaves on Wednesday.”
“We must wait till then, Master Lionel.”
“Agreed! Between now and then we’ll collogue.”
A small field assembled at Bramshaw Telegraph, small but select, true lovers of the game, such as you meet on noble Exmoor. Hounds and hunt-servants were awaiting the Master. Presently he dashed up in a motor car, one of the finest horsemen in the kingdom, a lover of hounds and beloved by them. As he walked towards the pack, the veterans, the fourth and fifth season hounds, rushed at him. He greeted them by name: “Ravager, old boy!—Down Hemlock, down!—Sportsman, you sinner, you’re rolin’ in fat!” Then he approached a group of men standing back from the hounds. They touched their hats. These, for the most part, were forest keepers acting as “harbourers.” One, riding a pony,—the head keeper of Ashley Walk—reported three In the New Forest a “stag” means a red deer, bigger, speedier, with more endurance than his fallow kinsmen. The Master, who hunted his own hounds, shook his head. Margot heard him say: “Ah, they must wait for a day or too, I’ve too many young ’uns out.” Lionel told Margot that a red deer might make a fifteen mile point. The Master talked with the under-keepers. One, not a servant of the Crown, had seen very early in the morning, a herd of four bucks in Pound Bottom, including a “great buck” (over seven years old).