“Oh, come along!” exclaimed the Earl, looking back for her. “Oh, come along,” repeated he, waving her onward, as he held in his horse.
There was no resisting the appeal, for it was clear he would come back for her if she did, so touching her horse with the whip, she is again cantering by his side.
“I’d give the world to see you beat that impudent ugly hatter,” said he, now pointing Hicks out in the act of riding at a stiff newly-plashed fence before his hounds were half over.
And his lordship spurred his horse as he spoke with a vigour that spoke the intensity of his feelings.
The line of chase then lay along the swiftly flowing Arrow banks and across Oxley large pastures, parallel with the Downton bridle-road, along which Dicky and his followers now pounded; Dicky hugging himself with the idea that the fox was making for the main earths on Bringwood moor, to which he knew every yard of the country.
And so the fox was going as straight and as hard as ever he could, but as ill luck would have it, young Mr. Nailor, the son of the owner of Oxley pastures, shot at a snipe at the west corner of the large pasture just as pug entered at the east, causing him to shift his line and thread Larchfield plantations instead of crossing the pasture, and popping down Tillington Dean as he intended.
Dicky had heard the gun, and the short turn of the hounds now showing him what had happened, he availed himself of the superiority of a well-mounted nobleman’s huntsman in scarlet over a tweed-clad muffin-capped shooter, for exclaiming at the top of his voice as he cantered past, horn in hand,
“O ye poachin’ davil, what business ‘ave ye there!”
“O ye nasty sneakin’ snarin’ ticket-o’-leaver, go back to the place from whance you came!” leaving the poor shooter staring with astonishment.
A twang of the horn now brings the hounds—who have been running with a flinging catching side-wind scent on to the line, and a full burst of melody greets the diminished field, as they strike it on the bright grass of the plantation.