I drag Vandeleur in a helpless condition out on the balcony, boost him up on the railing, and push him off. Then I leap after him.
Fortunate fate! We fall into a clump of blackberry bushes, and not a moment too soon. Lights flash out from above. I hear the hum of excited voices, Bella's calm and distinct above the rest, as she gives the ominous order, "Let those bloodhounds loose!"
Ugh! We scramble out of the bushes in the most undignified haste, leaving most of our outward resemblance to human beings on the thorny twigs. Then helter-skelter over the fields and hedges, stumbling, staggering, and traversing what I suppose to be miles of country.
Vandeleur is snorting like a steam calliope in bad repair, and I am breathing with the jerky movement of an overworked accordion. "I can go no farther," he exclaims, dropping down in a huddled heap at the foot of a scrubby pine-tree like a bag of old clothes.
I don't feel much in a hurry either, but I try to infuse some life into him by hustling him and shaking him in a brutal and unsympathetic manner.
"Do you hear that?" I howl in despair as the baying of the bloodhounds rolls towards us over the meadow like muttered thunder. "There is nothing to do but climb this tree, unless you want to furnish a free lunch for those brutes."
"Free lunch? get me some," he mumbles, relapsing into his old idiotic state again. Then I fall upon that unfortunate man in a fury of rage, and pound him into a consciousness of his danger.
He consents at last to be pushed or rather dragged up in a tree, whose lowest limb I straddle with a feeling of wild joy and ecstasy just as the hounds rush past below, their flashing eyes looking to me just then as large as the headlights of a host of engines.
"Let's go home now," again murmurs the helpless creature at my side, shaking so on the limb that I am compelled to strap him there by his suspenders.
"Ain't we going home?" he chatters. "I want a good supper, and then a bed—bed," lingering on the last word with soothing emphasis.