"Then you do not blame me?" asked Campbell, with a subdued, almost deprecatory voice, such as Thurnall had never heard in him before.
"The man deserved to die, and he died, sir. It is well that there are some means left on earth of punishing offenders whom the law cannot touch."
"It is an awful responsibility."
"Not more awful than killing a man in battle, which we both have done, sir, and yet have felt no sting of conscience."
"An awful responsibility still. Yet what else is life made up of, from morn to night, but of deeds which may earn heaven or hell?… Well, as he did to others, so was it done to him. God forgive him! At least, our cause will be soon tried and judged: there is little fear of my not meeting him again—soon enough." And Campbell, with a sad smile, lay back in his chair and was silent.
"My dear sir," said Tom, "allow me to remind you, after this excitement comes a collapse; and that is not to be trifled with just now. Medicine I dare not give you. Food I must."
Campbell shook his head.
"You must go now, my dear fellow. It is now half-past ten, and I will be at Pennington's at one o'clock, to see how he goes on; so you need not go there. And, meanwhile, I must take a little medicine."
"Major, you are not going to doctor yourself?" cried Tom.
"There is a certain medicine called prayer, Mr. Thurnall—an old specific for the heart-ache, as you will find one day—which I have been neglecting much of late, and which I must return to in earnest before midnight. Good-bye, God bless and keep you!" And the Major retired to his bed-room, and did not stir off his knees for two full hours. After which he went to Pennington's, and thence somewhere else; and Tom met him at four o'clock that morning musing amid unspeakable horrors, quiet, genial, almost cheerful.
"You are a man," said Tom to himself; "and I fancy at times something more than a man; more than me at least."
Tom was right in his fear that after excitement would come collapse; but wrong as to the person to whom it would come. When he arrived at the surgery door, Headley stood waiting for him.
"Anything fresh? Have you seen the Heales?"
"I have been praying with them. Don't be frightened. I am not likely to forget the lesson of this afternoon."
"Then go to bed. It is full twelve o'clock."
"Not yet, I fear. I want you to see old Willis. All is not right."
"Ah! I thought the poor dear old man would kill himself. He has been working too hard, and presuming on his sailor's power of tumbling in and taking a dog's nap whenever he chose."
"I have warned him again and again: but he was working so magnificently, that one had hardly heart to stop him. And beside, nothing would part him from his maid."
"I don't wonder at that:" quoth Tom to himself. "Is she with him?"
"No: he found himself ill; slipped home on some pretence; and will not hear of our telling her."
"Noble old fellow! Caring for every one but himself to the last." And they went in.
It was one of those rare cases, fatal, yet merciful withal, in which the poison seems to seize the very centre of the life, and to preclude the chance of lingering torture, by one deadening blow.
The old man lay paralysed, cold, pulseless, but quite collected and cheerful. Tom looked, inquired, shook his head, and called for a hot bath of salt and water.
"Warmth we must have, somehow. Anything to keep the fire alight."
"Why so, sir?" asked the old man "The fire's been flickering down this many a year. Why not let it go out quietly, at three-score years and ten? You're sure my maid don't know?"
They put him into his bath, and he revived a little.
"No; I am not going to get well; so don't you waste your time on me, sirs! I'm taken while doing my duty, as I hoped to be. And I've lived to see my maid do hers, as I knew she would, when the Lord called on her. I have,—but don't tell her, she's well employed, and has sorrows enough already, some that you'll know of some day—"
"You must not talk," quoth Tom, who guessed his meaning, and wished to avoid the subject.
"Yes, but I must, sir. I've no time to lose. If you'd but go and see after those poor Heales, and come again. I'd like to have one word with Mr. Headley; and my time runs short."
"A hundred, if you will," said Frank.
"And now, sir," when they were alone, "only one thing, if you'll excuse an old sailor," and Willis tried vainly to make his usual salutation; but the cramped hand refused to obey,—"and a dying one too."
"What is it?"
"Only don't be hard on the people, sir; the people here. They're good-hearted souls, with all their sins, if you'll only take them as you find them, and consider that they've had no chance."
"Willis, Willis, don't talk of that! I shall be a wiser man henceforth, I trust. At least I shall not trouble Aberalva long."
"Oh, sir, don't talk so; and you just getting a hold of them!"
"I?"
"Yes, you, sir. They've found you out at last, thank God. I always knew what you were and said it. They've found you out in the last week; and there's not a man in the town but what would die for you, I believe."
This announcement staggered Frank. Some men it would have only hardened in their pedantry, and have emboldened them to say: "Ah! then these men see that a High Churchman can work like any one else, when there is a practical sacrifice to be made. Now I have a standing ground which no one can dispute from which to go on, and enforce my idea of what he ought to be."
But, rightly or wrongly, no such thought crossed Frank's mind. He was just as good a Churchman as ever—why not? Just as fond of his own ideal of what a parish and a Church Service ought to be—why not? But the only thought which did rise in his mind was one of utter self-abasement.
"Oh, how blind I have been! How I have wasted my time in laying down the law to these people: fancying myself infallible, as if God were not as near to them as He is to me—certainly nearer than to any book on my shelves—offending their little prejudices, little superstitions, in my own cruel self-conceit and self-will! And now, the first time that I forget my own rules; the first time that I forget almost that I am a priest, even a Christian at all! that moment they acknowledge me as a priest, as a Christian. The moment I meet them upon the commonest human ground, helping them as one heathen would help another, simply because he was his own flesh and blood, that moment they soften to me and show me how much I might have done with them twelve months ago, had I had but common sense!"
He knelt down and prayed by the old man, for him and for himself.
"Would it be troubling you, sir?" said the old man at last. "But I'd like to take the Sacrament before I go."
"Of course. Whom shall I ask in?"
The old man paused awhile. "I fear it's selfish: but it seems to me I would not ask it, but that I know I'm going. I should like to take it with my maid, once more before I die."
"I'll go for her," said Frank, "the moment Thurnall comes back to watch you."
"What need to go yourself, sir? Old Sarah will go, and willing."
Thurnall came in at that moment.
"I am going to fetch Miss Harvey. Where is she, Captain?"
"At Janey Headon's, along with her two poor children."
"Stay," said Tom, "that's a bad quarter, just at the fish-house back.
Have some brandy before you start?"
"No! no Dutch courage!" and Frank was gone. He had a word to say to Grace Harvey, and it must be said at once.
He turned down the silent street, and turned up over stone stairs, through quaint stone galleries and balconies such as are often huddled together on the cliff sides in fishing towns; into a stifling cottage, the door of which had been set wide open in the vain hope of fresh air. A woman met him, and clasped both his hands, with tears of joy.
"They're mending, sir! They're mending, else I'd have sent to tell you.
I never looked for you so late."
There was a gentle voice in the next room. It was Grace's.
"Ah, she's praying by them now. She'm giving them all their medicines all along! Whatever I should have done without her?—and in and out all day long, too; till one fancies at whiles the Lord must have changed her into five or six at once, to be everywhere to the same minute."
Frank went in, and listened to her prayer. Her face was as pale and calm as the pale, calm faces of the two worn-out babes, whose heads lay on the pillow close to hers: but her eyes were lit up with an intense glory, which seemed to fill the room with love and light.
Frank listened: but would not break the spell.
At last she rose, looked round and blushed.
"I beg your pardon, sir, for taking the liberty. If I had known that you were about, I would have sent: but hearing that you were gone home, I thought you would not be offended, if I gave thanks for them myself. They are my own, sir, as it were—"
"Oh, Miss Harvey, do not talk so! While you can pray as you were praying then, he who would silence you might be silencing unawares the Lord himself!"
She made no answer, though the change in Frank's tone moved her; and when he told her his errand, that thought also passed from her mind.
At last, "Happy, happy man!" she said calmly; and putting on her bonnet, followed Frank out of the house.
"Miss Harvey," said Frank, as they hurried up the street, "I must say one word to you, before we take that Sacrament together."
"Sir?"
"It is well to confess all sins before the Eucharist, and I will confess mine. I have been unjust to you. I know that you hate to be praised; so I will not tell you what has altered my opinion. But Heaven forbid that I should ever do so base a thing, as to take the school away from one who is far more fit to rule in it than ever I shall be!"
Grace burst into tears.
"Thank God! And I thank you, sir! Oh, there's never a storm but what some gleam breaks through it! And now, sir, I would not have told you it before, lest you should fancy that I changed for the sake of gain— though, perhaps, that is pride, as too much else has been. But you will never hear of me inside either of those chapels again."
"What has altered your opinion of them, then?"
"It would take long to tell, sir: but what happened this morning filled the cup. I begin to think, sir, that their God and mine are not the same. Though why should I judge them, who worshipped that other God myself till no such long time since; and never knew, poor fool, that the Lord's name was Love?"
"I have found out that, too, in these last days. More shame to me than to you that I did not know it before."
"Well for us both that we do know it now, sir. For if we believed Him now, sir, to be aught but perfect Love, how could we look round here to-night, and not go mad?"
"Amen!" said Frank.
And how had the pestilence, of all things on earth, revealed to those two noble souls that God is Love?
Let the reader, if he have supplied Campbell's sermon, answer the question for himself.
They went in, and upstairs to Willis.
Grace bent over the old man, tenderly, but with no sign of sorrow.
Dry-eyed, she kissed the old man's forehead; arranged his bed-clothes, woman-like, before she knelt down; and then the three received the Sacrament together.
"Don't turn me out," whispered Tom. "It's no concern of mine, of course; but you are all good creatures, and, somehow, I should like to be with you."
So Tom stayed; and what thoughts passed through his heart are no concern of ours.
Frank put the cup to the old man's lips; the lips closed, sipped,—then opened … the jaw had fallen.
"Gone," said Grace quietly.
Frank paused, awe-struck.
"Go on, sir," said she, in a low voice. "He hears it all more clearly than he ever did before." And by the dead man's side Frank finished the Communion Service.
Grace rose when it was over, kissed the calm forehead, and went out without a word.
"Tom," said Frank, in a whisper, "come into the next room with me."
Tom hardly heard the tone in which the words were spoken, or he would perhaps have answered otherwise than he did.
"My father takes the Communion," said he, half to himself. "At least, it is a beautiful old—"
Howsoever the sentence would have been finished, Tom stopped short—
"Hey?—What does that mean?"
"At last?" gasped Frank, gently enough. "Excuse me!" He was bowed almost double, crushing Thurnall's arm in the fierce gripe of pain. "Pish!– Hang it!—Impossible!—There, you are all right now!"
"For the time. I can understand many things now. Curious sensation it is, though. Can you conceive a sword put in on one side of the waist, just above the hip-bone, and drawn through, handle and all, till it passes out at the opposite point?"
"I have felt it twice; and therefore you will be pleased to hold your tongue and go to bed. Have you had any warnings?"
"Yes,—no,—that is—this morning: but I forgot. Never mind!—What matter a hundred years hence I There it is again!—God help me!"
"Humph!" growled Thurnall to himself. "I'd sooner have lost a dozen of these herring-hogs, whom nobody misses, and who are well out of their life-scrape: but the parson, just as he was making a man!"
There is no use in complaints. In half an hour Frank is screaming like a woman, though he has bitten his tongue half through to stop his screams.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE BLACK HOUND
Pah! Let us escape anywhere for a breath of fresh air, for even the scent of a clean turf. We have been watching saints and martyrs—perhaps not long enough for the good of our souls, but surely too long for the comfort of our bodies. Let us away up the valley, where we shall find, it not indeed a fresh healthful breeze (for the drought lasts on), at least a cool refreshing down-draught from Carcarrow Moor before the sun gets up. It is just half-past four o'clock, on a glorious August morning. We shall have three hours at least before the heavens become one great Dutch-oven again.
We shall have good company, too, in our walk; for here comes Campbell fresh from his morning's swim, swinging up the silent street toward Frank Headley's lodging.
He stops, and tosses a pebble against the window-pane. In a minute or two Thurnall opens the street-door and slips out to him.
"Ah, Major! Overslept myself at last; that sofa is wonderfully comfortable. No time to go down and bathe. Ill get my header somewhere up the stream."
"How is he?"
"He? sleeping like a babe, and getting well as fast as his soul will allow his body. He has something on his mind. Nothing to be ashamed of, though, I will warrant; for a purer, nobler fellow I never met."
"When can we move him?"
"Oh, to-morrow, if he will agree. You may all depart and leave me and the Government man to make out the returns of killed and wounded. We shall have no more cholera. Eight days without a new case. We shall do now. I'm glad you are coming up with us."
"I will just see the hounds throw off, and then go back and get Headley's breakfast."
"No, no! you mustn't, sir: you want a day's play."
"Not half as much as you. And I am in no hunting mood just now. Do you take your fill of the woods and the streams, and let me see our patient. I suppose you will be back by noon?"
"Certainly." And the two swing up the street, and out of the town, along the vale toward Trebooze.
For Trebooze of Trebooze has invited them, and Lord Scoutbush, and certain others, to come out otter-hunting; and otter-hunting they will go.
Trebooze has been sorely exercised, during the last fortnight, between fear of the cholera and desire of calling upon Lord Scoutbush—"as I ought to do, of course, as one of the gentry round; he's a Whig, of course, and no more to me than anybody else; but one don't like to let politics interfere;" by which Trebooze glosses over to himself and friends the deep Hunkeydom with which he lusteth after a live lord's acquaintance, and one especially in whom he hopes to find even such a one as himself…. "Good fellow, I hear he is, too,—good sportsman, smokes like a chimney," and so forth.
So at last, when the cholera has all but disappeared, he comes down to Penalva, and introduces himself, half swaggering, half servile; begins by a string of apologies for not having called before,—"Mrs. Trebooze so afraid of infection, you see, my lord,"—which is a lie: then blunders out a few fulsome compliments to Scoutbush's courage in staying; then takes heart at a little joke of Scoutbush's, and tries the free and easy style; fingers his lordship's high-priced Hudsons, and gives a broad hint that he would like to smoke one on the spot; which hint is not taken, any more than the bet of a "pony" which he offers five minutes afterwards, that he will jump his Irish mare in and out of Aberalva pound; is utterly "thrown on his haunches" (as he informs his friend Mr. Creed afterwards) by Scoutbush's praise of Tom Thurnall, as an "invaluable man, a treasure in such an out-of-the-way place, and really better company than ninety-nine men out of a hundred;" recovers himself again when Scoutbush asks after his otter-hounds, of which he has heard much praise from Tardrew; and launches out once more into sporting conversation of that graceful and lofty stamp which may be perused and perpended in the pages of "Handley Cross," and "Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour," books painfully true to that uglier and baser side of sporting life, which their clever author has chosen so wilfully to portray.
So, at least, said Scoutbush to himself, when his visitor had departed.
"He's just like a page out of Sponge's Tour, though he's not half as good a fellow as Sponge himself; for Sponge knew he was a snob, and lived up to his calling honestly: but this fellow wants all the while to play at being a gentleman; and—Ugh! how the fellow smelt of brandy, and worse! His hand, too, shook as if he had the palsy, and he chattered and fidgetted like a man with St. Vitus's dance."
"Did he, my lord?" quoth Tom Thurnall, when he heard the same, in a very meaning tone.
And Trebooze, "for his part, couldn't make out that lord—uncommonly agreeable, and easy, and all that: but shoves a fellow off, and sets him down somehow, and in such a – civil way, that you don't know where to have him."
However, Trebooze departed in high spirits; for Lord Scoutbush has deigned to say that he will be delighted to see the otter-hounds work any morning that Trebooze likes, and anyhow—no time too early for him. "He will bring his friend Major Campbell?"
"By all means."
"Expect two or three sporting gentlemen from the neighbourhood, too. Regular good ones, my lord—though they are county bucks—very much honoured to make your lordship's acquaintance."
Scoutbush expresses himself equally honoured by making their acquaintance, in a tone of bland simplicity, which utterly puzzles Trebooze, who goes a step further.
"Your lordship'll honour us by taking pot luck afterwards. Can't show you French cookery, you know, and your souffleys and glacys, and all that. Honest saddle o' mutton, and the grounds of old port.—My father laid it down, and I take it up, eh?" And Trebooze gave a wink and a nudge of his elbow, meaning to be witty.
His lordship was exceedingly sorry; it was the most unfortunate accident: but he had the most particular engagement that very afternoon, and must return early from the otter-hunt, and probably sail the next day for Wales. "But," says the little man, who knows all about Trebooze's household, "I shall not fail to do myself the honour of calling on Mrs. Trebooze, and expressing my regret," etc.
So to the otter-hunt is Scoutbush gone, and Campbell and Thurnall after him; for Trebooze has said to himself, "Must ask that blackguard of a doctor—hang him! I wish he were an otter himself; but if he's so thick with his lordship it won't do to quarrel." For, indeed, Thurnall might tell tales. So Trebooze swallows his spite and shame,—as do many folk who call themselves his betters, when they have to deal with a great man's hanger-on,—and sends down a note to Tom:
"Mr. Trebooze requests the pleasure of Mr. Thurnall's company with his hounds at–"
And Tom accepts—why not? and chats with Campbell, as they go, on many things; and among other things on this,—
"By the by," said he, "I got an hour's shore-work yesterday afternoon, and refreshing enough it was. And I got a prize, too. The sucking barnacle which you asked for: I was certain I should get one or two, if I could have a look at the pools this week. Jolly little dog! he was paddling and spinning about last night, and enjoying himself, 'ere age with creeping'—What is it?—'hath clawed him in his clutch.' That fellow's destiny is not a hopeful analogy for you, sir, who believe that we shall rise after we die into some higher and freer state."
"Why not?"
"Why, which is better off, the free swimming larva, or the perfect cirrhipod, rooted for ever motionless to the rock?"
"Which is better off, the roving young fellow who is sowing his wild oats, or the man who has settled down, and become a respectable landowner with a good house over his head?"
"And begun to propagate his species? Well, you have me there, sir, as far as this life is concerned; but you will confess that the barnacle's history proves that all crawling grubs don't turn into butterflies."
"I daresay the barnacle turns into what is best for him; at all events, what he deserves. That rule of yours will apply to him, to whomsoever it will not."
"And so does penance for the sins of his youth, as some of us are to do in the next world?"
"Perhaps yes; perhaps no; perhaps neither."
"Do you speak of us, or the barnacle?"
"Of both."
"I am glad of that; for on the popular notion of our being punished a million years hence for what we did when we were lads, I never could see anything but a misery and injustice in our having come into the world at all."
"I can," said the Major quietly.
"Of course I meant nothing rude: but I had to buy my experience, and paid for it dearly enough in folly."
"So had I to buy mine."
"Then why be punished over and above? Why have to pay for the folly, which was itself only the necessary price of experience'?"
"For being, perhaps, so foolish as not to use the experience after it has cost you so dear."
"And will punishment cure me of the foolishness?"
"That depends on yourself. If it does, it must needs be so much the better for you. But perhaps you will not be punished, but forgiven."
"Let off? That would be a very bad thing for me, unless I become a very different man from what I have been as yet. I am always right glad now to get a fall whenever I make a stumble. I should have gone to sleep in my tracks long ago else, as one to do in the back woods on a long elk hunt."
"Perhaps you may become a very different man."
"I should be sorry for that, even if it were possible."
"Why? Do you consider yourself perfect?"
"No…. But somehow, Thomas Thurnall is an old friend of mine, the first I ever had; and I should be sorry to lose his company."
"I don't think you need fear doing so. You have seen an insect go through strange metamorphoses, and yet remain the same individual; why should not you and I do so likewise?"
"Well?"
"Well—There are some points about you, I suppose, which you would not be sorry to have altered?"
"A few," quoth Tom, laughing. "I do not consider myself quite perfect yet."
"What if those points were not really any part of your character, but mere excrescences of disease: or if that be too degrading a notion, mere scars of old wounds, and of the wear and tear of life; and what if, in some future life, all those disappeared, and the true Mr. Thomas Thurnall, pure and simple, were alone left?"
"It is a very hopeful notion. Only, my dear sir, one is quite self-conceited enough in this imperfect state. What intolerable coxcombs we should all be if we were perfect, and could sit admiring ourselves for ever and ever!"
"But what if that self-conceit and self-dependence were the very root of all the disease, the cause of all the scars, the very thing which will have to be got rid of, before our true character and true manhood can be developed?"
"Yes, I understand. Faith and humility…. You will forgive me, Major Campbell. I shall learn to respect those virtues when good people have defined them a little more exactly, and can show me somewhat more clearly in what faith differs from superstition, and humility from hypocrisy."
"I do not think any man will ever define them for you. But you may go through a course of experiences, more severe, probably, than pleasant, which may enable you at last to define them for yourself."
"Have you defined them?" asked Tom, bluntly, glancing round at his companion.
"Faith?—Yes, I trust. Humility?—No, I fear."
"I should like to hear your definition of the former, at least."
"Did I not say that you must discover it for yourself?"
"Yes. Well. When the lesson comes, if it does come, I suppose it will come in some learnable shape; and till then, I must shift for myself— and if self-dependence he a punishable sin, I shall, at all events, have plenty of company whithersoever I go. There is Lord Scoutbush and Trebooze!"
Why did not Campbell speak his mind more clearly to Thurnall?
Because he knew that with such men words are of little avail. The disease was entrenched too strongly in the very centre of the man's being. It seemed at moments as if all his strange adventures and hairbreadth escapes had been sent to do him harm, and not good; to pamper and harden his self-confidence, not to crush it. Therefore Campbell seldom argued with him: but he prayed for him often; for he had begun, as all did who saw much of Tom Thurnall, to admire and respect him, in spite of all his faults.
And now, turning through a woodland path, they descend toward the river, till they can hear voices below them; Scoutbush laughing quietly, Trebooze laying down the law at the top of his voice.
"How noisy the fellow is, and how he is hopping about!" says Campbell.
"No wonder: he has been soaking, I hear, for the last fortnight, with some worthy compeers, by way of keeping off cholera. I must have my eye on him to-day."
Scrambling down through the brushwood, they found themselves in such a scene as Creswick alone knows how to paint: though one element of beauty, which Creswick uses full well, was wanting; and the whole place was seen, not by slant sun-rays, gleaming through the boughs, and dappling all the pebbles with a lacework of leaf shadows, but in the uniform and sober grey of dawn.
A broad bed of shingle, looking just now more like an ill-made turnpike road than the bed of Alva stream; above it, a long shallow pool, which showed every stone through the transparent water; on the right, a craggy bank, bedded with deep wood sedge and orange-tipped king ferns, clustering beneath sallow and maple bushes already tinged with gold; on the left, a long bar of gravel, covered with giant "butter-bur" leaves; in and out of which the hounds are brushing—beautiful black-and-tan dogs, of which poor Trebooze may be pardonably proud; while round the burleaf-bed dances a rough white Irish terrier, seeming, by his frantic self-importance, to consider himself the master of the hounds.
Scoutbush is standing with Trebooze beyond the bar, upon a little lawn set thick with alders. Trebooze is fussing and fidgetting about, wiping his forehead perpetually; telling everybody to get out of the way, and not to interfere; then catching hold of Scoutbush's button to chatter in his face; then, starting aside to put some part of his dress to rights. His usual lazy drawl is exchanged for foolish excitement. Two or three more gentlemen, tired of Trebooze's absurdities, are scrambling over the rocks above, in search of spraints. Old Tardrew waddles stooping along the line where grass and shingle meet, his bulldog visage bent to his very knees.
"Tardrew out hunting?" says Campbell. "Why, it is but a week since his daughter was buried!"
"And why not? I like him better for it. Would he bring her back again by throwing away a good day's sport? Better turn out, as he has done, and forget his feelings, if he has any."
"He has feelings enough, don't doubt. But you are right. There is something very characteristic in the way in which the English countryman never shows grief, never lets it interfere with business, even with pleasure."
"Hillo! Mr. Trebooze!" says the old fellow, looking up. "Here it is!"
"Spraint?—Spraint?—Spraint?—Where? Eh—what?" cries Trebooze.
"No; but what's as good: here on this alder stump, not an hour old. I thought they beauties starns weren't flemishing for nowt."
"Here! Here! Here! Here! Musical, Musical! Sweetlips! Get out of the way!"—and Trebooze runs down.
Musical examines, throws her nose into the air, and answers by the rich bell-like note of the true otter hound; and all the woodlands ring as the pack dashes down the shingle to her call.
"Over!" shouts Tom. "Here's the fresh spraint our side!"
Through the water splash squire, viscount, steward, and hounds, to the horror of a shoal of par, the only visible tenants of a pool, which, after a shower of rain, would be alive with trout. Where those trout are in the meanwhile is a mystery yet unsolved.
Over dances the little terrier, yapping furiously, and expending his superfluous energy by snapping right and left at the par.
"Hark to Musical! hark to Sweetlips! Down the stream?—No! the old girl has it; right up the bank!"
"How do, Doctor? How do, Major Campbell? Forward!—Forward!—Forward!" shouts Trebooze, glad to escape a longer parley, as with his spear in his left hand, he clutches at the overhanging boughs with his right, and swings himself up, with Peter, the huntsman, after him. Tom follows him; and why?
Because he does not like his looks. That bull-eye is red, and almost bursting; his cheeks are flushed, his lips blue, his hand shakes; and Tom's quick eye has already remarked, from a distance, over and above his new fussiness, a sudden shudder, a quick half-frightened glance behind him; and perceived, too, that the moment Musical gave tongue, he put the spirit-flask to his mouth.
Away go the hounds at score through tangled cover, their merry peal ringing from brake and brier, clashing against the rocks, moaning musically away through distant glens aloft.