“‘We’ll roast her for one at all events,” laughed Mr. Trail, the auctioneer, still hoping to get her.
“First catch your hare, says Mrs. Somebody,” responded Captain Nabley, eyeing the sorely puzzled pack.
“O ketch her! we’re sure to ketch her,” observed Mr. Nettlefold, chucking up his chin and dismounting.
“Not so clear about that,” muttered Mr. Rintoul, as Lovely, and Bustler, and Lilter, again returned to repeat the search.
“If those hounds can’t own her, there are no hounds in England can,” asserted the Major, anxious to save the credit of his pack before the—he feared—too critical stranger.
At this depressing moment, again come the infantry, and commence the same system of peering and poking that marked their descent on the former occasion.
And now poor puss being again a little recruited, steals out of her hiding-place, and crosses quietly along the outside of the wall to where a flock of those best friends to a hunted hare, some newly-smeared, white-faced sheep, were quietly nibbling at the halfgrass, half-heather, of the little moor-edge farm of Mossheugh-law, whose stone-roofed buildings, washed by a clear mountain stream, and sheltered by a clump of venerable Scotch firs, stand on a bright green patch, a sort of oasis in the desert. The sheep hardly deign to notice the hare, far different to the consternation bold Reynard carries into their camp, when they go circling round like a squadron of dragoons, drawing boldly up to charge when the danger’s past. So poor, weary, foot sore, fur-matted puss, goes hobbling and limping up to the farm-buildings as if to seek protection from man against his brother man.
Now it so happened that Mrs. Kidwell, the half-farmer, half-shepherd’s pretty wife, was in the fold-yard, washing her churn, along with her little chubby-faced Jessey, who was equally busy with her Mamma munching away at a very long slice of plentifully-buttered and sugar’d bread; and Mamma chancing to look up from the churn to see how her darling progressed, saw puss halting at the threshold, as if waiting to be asked in.