Here she pointed with her whip as the hounds spread eagerly over a grassy flat immediately beneath them. They had been for some time imperceptibly ascending a slope.
The mists which had shrouded the mountain-tops had rolled back, and a panorama of grand and striking beauty stood revealed. Westward lay the lake, a silver sheet, amid the green slopes which marked its shores. On the south rose sheer and grim the enormous darkened cone which terminated the mountain range which they had approached. The released effulgence of the morning sun magically transfigured to purple masses the outline of the curving ridge, before crowning it with a tremulous aureole. Trending westerly, the level ground increased in width, until, but for its groves of eucalyptus, it might have been dignified by the name of plain. This gradually merged into a region of park-like forest.
‘What a charming place for a gallop!’ said Christabel Rockley. ‘I do so hope the fox, or whatever he is, will be found here. I should not be afraid to ride fast over this nice, clear country.’
‘It is almost too easy,’ said Miss Fane, drawing her bridle-rein, as she watched old Tom closely. ‘I like forest and range work, I must confess. But we must look out, or the hounds will be away, and we shall be left lamenting like so many Lord Ullins.’
The girl’s instinct had not deceived her. She had ridden many a day at her father’s side, when the shy cattle of a neglected herd, ready for headlong speed at the snapping of a twig, needed quick following to live with. Keeping her eye on old Tom, she had noted the signs of an approaching start.
A leading hound ran along a cattle track, and giving tongue, went off at score. Three or four comrades of position followed suit, and in the shortest possible time the whole pack was away, running with a breast high scent.
‘The black dingo for a thousand,’ said old Tom to the Master, as he hustled Boney alongside of the roan cob. ‘I seen Hobart Gay Lass put up her bristles the minit she settled to the scent. It’s a true tongue the slut has, and I’ll back her against ’ere a dog of the English lot, though there’s good hounds among them. We’ll have the naygur to-day, if there’s vartue in a good scent and a killing pack.’
‘Then you know him, Tom?’
‘By coorse, I do; he killed Strawberry’s calf, and didn’t I go down on my two knees and swear I’d have the heart’s blood of him.’
‘Then how did you manage to lay the hounds on him here—I thought he was a lake dog?’