Another mile and the dark quadruped, still at a stretching wolf-gallop, was decidedly nearer the leading hounds, whose bristles began to rise, ominous of blood. Old Tom, waving his cap, cheered them on as he rode rejoicingly forward on the wiry, unflinching grey. Slower and more laboured became the pace of the aboriginal canine. Before him was the cliff, upon the lower tier of which, could he have crawled, lay sanctuary. But in vain he scans eagerly the frowning masses of sandstone, denuded by the storms of ages. In vain he glances fiercely back at the remorseless pack, showing his glittering teeth. His doom is sealed. With a half-turn and a vicious snap, in which his teeth meet like a steel-trap through Cruiser’s neck, he confronts destiny. The next moment there is a confused heap of struggling, tearing hounds, a few seconds of dumb, despairing resistance, and the mothers of the herd are avenged.
Miss Fane turns away her head and joins the group of ‘first families,’ by this time enabled to be in respectably at the death.
Old Tom in due time appeared with the brush of the dingo, which he held on high for inspection. It was not unlike that of the true Reynard, though larger and fuller. It had also a white tag. The old man, advancing to Miss Fane’s side, thus spoke:
‘The Masther said I was to give ye the brush, Miss; it’s well ye desarve it. Sure I’d like to have seen ye with the Blazers. My kind sarvice to ye, and wishin’ ye the hoith of good fortune.’
‘Well done, Tom!’ said Argyll, ‘you have made a very neat speech; and we all congratulate Miss Fane upon her very spirited riding to-day. As you say, she well deserves the brush, and I hope she will grace many more of our meets.’
‘We must send the “cap” round for the huntsman, Tom,’ said Hampden, ‘who found such a straight-goer for the first run of the Lake William Hounds, and hit off the scent so neatly after the check.’
As he spoke he lifted it from the old man’s grey head, and placing a sovereign in it, rode along the ranks. He returned it with such a collection of coin as the old man, long accustomed to cheques and ‘orders,’ had not seen for years.
‘It’s fortunate the fox—the dingo, I mean,’ said Wilfred, ‘chose to make for the cliffs, instead of the other end of the lake. We should have had a terrible distance to ride home, though not in the dark, as one often was in the old country. Now, you must all come in, as we are so near The Chase. We can put up everybody who hasn’t pressing work to do at home.’
The day was done. The hunt was over, with the first pack of hounds that had ever been followed amid the green pastures which bordered the Great Lake. It was by no means the last. And indeed a hunter, bred and broken by one of the very men who then aided to establish that traditional sport, was fated, when shipped to England, to be one of the few well up in the quickest thing that the Pytchley saw that season, to be chronicled in Bell, and to win enduring renown for Australian horses and Australian riders. But that day, with much of Fate’s glad or sorrowful doings, was far in the unborn future. So the band of friends and neighbours returned to The Chase, pleased with themselves, with the day, and the feats performed, and above all, congratulating Squire Effingham upon the triumphant opening meet of the season.
Not all the meets were so well attended. But the grand fact remained that, at regular intervals, dawn saw the dappled beauties trooping forth at the heels of old Tom and the Master across the dewy meadows, beneath the century-old trees of the primeval forest. Still rang out the music, dear to Howard Effingham’s soul, when the scent lay well in the soft, cloudy, autumnal mornings. Still were there, occasionally, incidents of hunting spirit and feats of horsemanship worthy of the traditional glories of the ne’er-forgotten Fatherland.