talk to Dr. Mangan about it.  Things might be better than the old priest thought.  From the thought of the doctor his mind passed on to that of his wedding.  Was it possible that he was to be married next week?  A distinct physical drop of the heart accompanied the realisation.  “Nerves!” he told himself, and hurried on to reflect upon his bride.  She certainly looked stunning in those grey furs; he was glad he had given them to her; she knocked spots off any other girl in the country.  He impressed this thought on his mind.  And she had sung jolly well last night, and had accompanied him quite decently.  They would get on all right once they were married.  She had been a bit edgey these last few days, but—­some under-self warned him off the pursuit of this topic.  He began to formulate excuses for her that inculpated himself.  Larry “came of a gentle kind,” and had the generous temper that finds it easier to bear than to ascribe blame.

A note of the horn was wafted sweetly across the glen, and he came to the surface of his thoughts.  By Jove!  Where had Joker got him to?  The lane they had wandered down ran parallel with Gloun Kieraun, and a gap in the fence on his left made him aware that he was now moving abreast with the hunt, but was divided from his fellows by the chasm of the glen.

A second touch of the horn came; Larry checked his horse; Bill Kirby had seen him and was shouting to him.

“Head him back if he breaks your side!  I want him his way!”

All jolly fine for old Bill, but where did young Mr. Coppinger come in?  He held up his hand to show he had heard, and stood still.

One hound spoke, sharply, in the depths of the woody glen.  Another and another joined in.  In a moment, the echoing glen was full of voices; it was impossible to tell what was happening.  A couple and a half emerged on the farther side in the heather above the trees, working a line upwards, and speaking to it as they went.  Larry saw the Master force his horse down near them, and heard him cheering them and doubling his horn.  Another couple joined them, and Larry swore heartily.  Here he was on the wrong side, and the fox away to the east!  The cry redoubled; it sounded as if twice the pack were engaged, yet the two and a half couple were not being reinforced.  By some chance Larry withdrew his eyes from them, and just then, about a hundred yards further on, on his side of the glen, something like a brown feather floated up into view.

“A second fox, by the living Jingo!” whispered Larry, thrilling to that sight that never fails to thrill.

He held up his hat.  Bill saw the signal, and acknowledged it by redoubled efforts to get the hounds away with the fox that had broken to the east.  The chorus of sound grew and grew, and as Joker and his rider, tense with an equal excitement, listened, it became plain that the cry was drawing nearer to them.  Joker’s sensitive ears were twitching, his heart thumped; the storm of sound was just below them now, and then, hound by hound, Larry counted them as they came, fourteen couples struggled up over the lip of the glen where that brown feather had so lightly lifted into view, and drove ahead, on the way it had gone, with a rush and a cry that Larry could no more have checked than he could have stemmed and driven back the wild stream in the glen below.