‘What’s the matter?’ said Miss Fane. ‘Is the whole thing over? Was the dingo a myth?’
‘We have overrun the scent, Miss Fane,’ said Wilfred with dignity. ‘The hounds have checked, but we shall hit it off again in a few minutes.’
He had hardly finished speaking when Miss Fane, who, if it was her first day after hounds, had ‘kept her side’ well up for many a day in early girlhood, ‘when they wheeled the wild scrub cattle at the yard,’ took her horse by the head, with a rapid turn towards two couple of hounds that she had descried racing down the side of a creek. A neat jump, following old Tom over the narrow but deep water-course at a bend, placed her on easy terms with the pack. A new line of country lay spread out before them at right angles to their late course.
The hounds had now settled again to the scent. Another ‘blind’ creek, waterless, but respectable in the jumping way, lay in front. At this Miss Fane’s horse went so fast and took so extensive a fly, that Wilfred felt himself compelled to be hard on his Camerton chestnut and ride, if he intended to keep his place in the front alongside of this ‘leading lady,’ as Miss Fane’s nerve and experience entitled her to become.
But the rest of the field were not doomed to defeat and extinction, although Miss Fane’s knowledge of emergencies had enabled her to fix the moment when the scent was recovered.
Scarcely did the hounds swing to their line, for the dingo had turned, at right angles, in the creek, and so occasioned the outrunning of the scent, when Forbes, Ardmillan, Neil Barrington, and Fred Churbett were seen coming up hand over hand. Miss Effingham’s ‘dear Fergus’ was slipping along with his wonted graceful ease, and permitting the interchange of a few sentences with Mr. Churbett, who rode at her bridle-rein. Hampden, with whom was Beatrice, on Allspice, was riding wide of the hounds, but only waiting for serious business to show what manner of work he and The Caliph were wont to cut out for themselves. Bob Clarke, wonderful to relate, was not among the first flight. It could not have been the fault of Desborough—faster than any horse in the hunt—and as to jumping, why, he had a man on his back who was a sufficient answer to any reflections on that score.
‘May I niver be d——d!’ exclaimed old Tom, ‘if the varmint isn’t going straight for the paddock! One would think he was a rale fox, to see the divilment of him. Sure it must be the hounds puts them up to all the villainy. Well, the bigger the lape, the more divarshion.’
Satisfying himself with this view of the matter, old Tom watched with interest the field gradually approaching a large outer paddock, which lay at some distance from the house. It was the ordinary two-railed fence of the colonists, and though fairly stiff, not formidable to any one who intended going.
The hounds slipped quietly under the lower rail, and in another moment were racing, unchecked, along the flat which it enclosed. But with the field, this obstacle commenced to alter the state of matters.
The first flight, it is true, came rattling round a point of timber at any number of miles an hour, when they encountered this obstacle, to the sardonic entertainment of Tom Glendinning, who had eased his horse to see the effect. Wilfred and Miss Fane were still leading when the line of fence suddenly appeared. Wilfred, from his knowledge of the country, was aware that it was coming, and had prepared his companion for it.