To say that I was astonished would be putting it mildly. I was absolutely thunderstruck, but after a minute made up my mind it was some new kind of game, and prepared to follow.
‘Scud! Scud!’ I heard mother call, but I paid no attention. Running along the branch as far as it would bear, I made a flying leap into the next tree. It had been my dear father’s boast that he could travel from one end of our coppice to the other without once touching ground, and indeed I found no difficulty in doing the same. I was so excited that I thought nothing of jumps of six times my own length, for Jack was walking very fast, and I was in a dreadful fright that I might be left behind.
At the gate he turned and saw me. He stood a moment irresolute, then quickly vaulted the gate and started off across the field. At this I grew quite desperate, and dropping into the hedge scuttled along it, reached the gate-post, and sitting straight up gave one sharp bark. At that my master turned again and hurried back.
‘Oh, Nipper, why can’t you go home?’ he muttered, and picking me up, walked very fast back to the big beech-tree.
‘Good-bye, once more, old fellow,’ he said stooping over me, and suddenly I was startled by a drop like rain falling on my head.
Looking up in amazement, I saw my dear master’s face twisted as though in pain; but before I could make up my mind what was the matter, he suddenly pitched me gently back into the hollow where he had put me before, and brushing his sleeve across his face, fairly ran away down the path. Before I well realized what had happened, he was lost to sight among the trees.
As soon as I recovered a little from my astonishment, I started a second time for the gate; but before I reached it Jack was half-way across the field, and travelling so fast that I knew I could never catch him; and besides, I had always been terribly afraid of the ground ever since my escape from the terrier.
I don’t think that ever in my life have I felt so utterly miserable as when I realized that my master had abandoned me. You see, I could not understand it at all, and my one sensation was an utter and overwhelming loneliness. Gradually, too, I became frightened. I had never been alone out of doors before, and this was all so different to the Hall garden. The field seemed a vast green desert, and behind me the wood an illimitable rustling mystery full of unseen perils. How long I sat there straining my eyes after the vanished form of my master I do not know, but what roused me at last was a sudden rustle behind, which made me start violently. However, it was only Rusty, who had followed me, and was seated on a swinging hazel-bough in the hedge, staring at me in a perplexed fashion.
‘What’s the matter, Scud?’ he asked at last.