a deer that takes to the sea means a guinea from the hunt.  And the boat was necessary now, for as the Inistow men launched her and sprang aboard the leading hounds realised that their quarry could not be headed, or that their remaining strength would scarcely carry them back to shore, and gave up the chase.  By this the hunted stag gained another respite, for as the rowers pulled in his wake they had to pause half a dozen times and haul on board a hound that appeared on the point of sinking.

At the last moment the huntsman had leapt into the stern-sheets of the boat.  He had his knife ready, and the rowers too had a rope ready to lasso the stags’ antlers when they caught up with him.  Ashore the huddled crowd of riders watched the issue.  The children watched with them; and while they watched a sharp, authoritative voice said, close above Tilda’s ear—­

“They won’t reach him now.  He’ll sink before they get to him, and I’m glad of it.  He’s given us the last and best run of as good a season as either of us can remember—­eh, Parson?”

Tilda looked up with a sudden leap of the heart.  Above her, on a raw roan, sat a strong-featured lady in a bottle-green riding-habit, with a top hat—­the nap of which had apparently being brushed the wrong way—­ set awry on her iron-grey locks.

The clergyman she addressed—­a keen-faced, hunting parson, elderly, clean-shaven, upright as a ramrod on his mud-splashed grey—­answered half to himself and in a foreign tongue.

“Latin, hey?  You must translate for me.”

“A pagan sentiment, ma’am, from a pagan poet . . .  If I were Jove, that stag should sleep to-night under the waves on a coral bed.  He deserves it.”

“Or, better still, swim out to Holmness and reign his last days there, a solitary king.”

The Parson shook his head as he gazed.

“They would be few and hungry ones, ma’am, on an island more barren than Ithaca; no shady coverts, no young ash shoots to nibble, no turnip fields to break into and spoil . . .  Jove’s is the better boon, by your leave.”

“And, by Jove, he has it! . . .  Use your eyes, please; yours are better than mine.  For my part, I’ve lost him.”

They sat erect in their saddles, straining their gaze over the sea.

“It’s hard to say—­looking straight here against the sun, and with all this fog drifting about—­”

But here a cry, breaking almost simultaneously from a score of riders, drew his attention to the boat.

“Yes, the boat—­they have ceased pulling.  He must have sunk!”

“God rest his bones—­if a Christian may say it.”

“Why not, ma’am?”

But as he turned to her the lady turned also, bending down at a light eager touch on her stirrup.

“Oh, ma’am! . . .  Oh, Miss Sally!”

Miss Sally stared down into the small upturned face.

“Eh? . . .  Now where in the world have I seen you before?  Why, mercy, if it ain’t the child Elphinstone ran over!”