That night he slept indoors, but in the morning early he was awoken by the sound of trotting horses, and running to the window saw a farmer riding by very sprucely dressed.  Could they be hunting so soon, he wondered, but presently reassured himself that it could not be a hunt already.

He heard no other sound till eleven o’clock in the morning when suddenly there was the clamour of hounds giving tongue and not so far off neither.  At this Mr. Tebrick ran out of his house distracted and set open the gates of his garden, but with iron bars and wire at the top so the huntsmen could not follow.  There was silence again; it seems the fox must have turned away, for there was no other sound of the hunt.  Mr. Tebrick was now like one helpless with fear, he dared not go out, yet could not stay still at home.  There was nothing that he could do, yet he would not admit this, so he busied himself in making holes in the hedges, so that Silvia (or her cubs) could enter from whatever side she came.  At last he forced himself to go indoors and sit down and drink some tea.  While he was there he fancied he heard the hounds again; it was but a faint ghostly echo of their music, yet when he ran out of the house it was already close at hand in the copse above.

Now it was that poor Mr. Tebrick made his great mistake, for hearing the hounds almost outside the gate he ran to meet them, whereas rightly he should have run back to the house.  As soon as he reached the gate he saw his wife Silvia coming towards him but very tired with running and just upon her the hounds.  The horror of that sight pierced him, for ever afterwards he was haunted by those hounds—­their eagerness, their desperate efforts to gain on her, and their blind lust for her came at odd moments to frighten him all his life.  Now he should have run back, though it was already late, but instead he cried out to her, and she ran straight through the open gate to him.  What followed was all over in a flash, but it was seen by many witnesses.

The side of Mr. Tebrick’s garden there is bounded by a wall, about six feet high and curving round, so that the huntsmen could see over this wall inside.  One of them indeed put his horse at it very boldly, which was risking his neck, and although he got over safe was too late to be of much assistance.

His vixen had at once sprung into Mr. Tebrick’s arms, and before he could turn back the hounds were upon them and had pulled them down.  Then at that moment there was a scream of despair heard by all the field that had come up, which they declared afterwards was more like a woman’s voice than a man’s.  But yet there was no clear proof whether it was Mr. Tebrick or his wife who had suddenly regained her voice.  When the huntsman who had leapt the wall got to them and had whipped off the hounds Mr. Tebrick had been terribly mauled and was bleeding from twenty wounds.  As for his vixen she was dead, though he was still clasping her dead body in his arms.