'Homeward' was now the word, but not before the last beat of the day—reserved as a bonne bouche—was made, though noon was past and gloom was gathering speedily.
At the upper end of a little glen a long belt of firs bounded a field beyond which rose another belt, and in the field the guns were posted, while the pheasants could be seen making for the head of the wood.
Nearer and more near came the tapping of the beaters' rods, until one gallant bird rose at the edge and was knocked over by Roland, who was far away on the extreme right of the line. The tapping went gently on lest too many birds should be put up at once. Some rapid firing followed—all the more rapidly that the mist and rain were coming down the hill-slopes together.
In quick succession the birds left the covert, some flying to one flank, some to the other, while others rose high in the air, and some remained grovelling amid the undergrowth, never to leave it alive.
It was no slaughter—no battue—however; about a dozen brace were knocked over and picked up ere the mist descended over the field and its boundary belts of fir trees, and drawing their cartridges, in twos and threes, with their guns under their arms and their coat collars up, for the rain was falling now, the sportsmen began to take their way back towards the house, which was then some miles distant: and all reached it, in the gathering gloom of a prematurely early evening—weary, worn, yet in high spirits, and—save for the contents of their flasks—unrefreshed, when they discovered that Roland Lindsay was not with them—that in some unaccountable way they had, somehow, lost or missed him on the mountain side.
CHAPTER XXIX.
ALARM AND ANXIETY.
Time passed on—the mist and rain deepened around Earlshaugh, veiling coppice, glen, and field, and Roland did not appear.
He must have lost his way; but then every foot of the ground was so familiar to him that such seemed impossible; and the idea of an accident did not as yet occur to any one.
Thus none waited for him at the late luncheon table, and then, as in the smoke-room and over the billiard balls, Jack Elliot and others talked only of the events of the day—how the birds were flushed and knocked over—of hits and misses, of game clean-killed, and so forth; how one gorgeous old pheasant in particular came crashing down through the wiry branches of the dark firs in the agonies of death; and how deftly Roland killed his game, without requiring a keeper to give the coup de grâce—there were never many runners before him, and how 'he looked as fresh as a daisy after doing the ninety acre copse,' and so forth, till his protracted absence and the closing in of the darkness, with the ringing of the dressing-bell for dinner, made all conscious of the time, and led them to wonder "what on earth" had become of him—what had happened, and whither had he, or could he have gone!