“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Will Sykes. “You’re a pretty kind of a Christian, Tom. I suppose, by-an’-bye, you’ll say they sing hymns.”
“I don’t see why they shouldn’t,” replied the imperturbable Tom Holt. “At least,” continued he, “if they don’t, they’re a sight more sensible than many of those that do.”
“Come, come,” said the huntsman, in a correcting tone; “try back, Tom. We shall have stones fall from the clouds presently, if you go on in that way.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if they did,” replied the whipper-in, as cool as a cucumber. “When so many folk, both gentle an’ simple, are building castles in the air, it’s nothing but reasonable that some o’ the stones should tumble.”
“Ca-a-pital!” added Will Sykes admiringly. “I like a sharp and ready tongue. But you don’t really mean to say, Tom, that you think hounds have a way of speaking to one another?”
“Yes, I do,” replied the whipper-in; “and have no doubt of the fact. They have the sense,” continued he, “to understand what we say to them, and a great deal, in my opinion, of what we say of them; and it’s quite as natural, if not more so, that they should have a language of their own, as it is for them to comprehend a foreign one.”
“Your notions are queer ones, Tom,” observed the huntsman. “And you’d have me believe, I suppose, that Ringwood there has been told what he’s going to do?”
“Nothing more likely,” replied Tom Holt.
We were now on the verge of Wiverton Gorse—an extensive brake of some forty acres of high but not thick furze, except in patches where it had been lately cut.
“Don’t let a hound get away,” said the huntsman. “We’ll rattle the covers well; but be sure and hold the hounds in.”