So it was now, on the furzy side of Cnocan an Ceoil Sidhe; she knew that the moment had come.  She sat down on a ledge of rock, and waited, throbbing with anticipation, and had not long to wait.  A brown shadow moved in the bracken near the dolmen, a brown face peered with infinite caution, round a flank of the great stones.

“Yoop! the little bitchie!” said Christian to the horizon.  Christian was an apt scholar, and Cottingham’s tone and idiom were alike accurately rendered.

The lady thus addressed gazed with a greater intensity, but did not move.  Christian took a piece of dog-biscuit from the ragged pocket of the kennel-coat, and, still walking closely in Cottingham’s steps, bit it, ate a part of it, and carelessly flung the remainder in the direction of the shadow.  This stole forth, and, having snapped up the biscuit, sank back into the covert.  Christian did not move.

“Amazon!” she crooned, in tones in which a doting wood-pigeon might apostrophise a sickly fledgling; “Amazon, my darling!”

Another piece of biscuit accompanied the apostrophe, and poor Amazon, who was indeed very lonely and very hungry, capitulated, and came sidling up to the charmer, with propitiatory smiles, and deprecating stern wagging, beneath her, and in advance of her hind legs, instead of above her and behind them.

“’Olding the buckle in the right ’and,” said Christian to herself, in faithful quotation from the great ensample, as with a swiftness and decision that were creditable to her training, she put the couples on Amazon.

Then she produced the bone that had been “Dixie’s” bright achievement, and it was while, in contentment and friendship, Amazon was crunching it, that Larry Coppinger appeared.

He rose from behind a spur of rock and furze, and came towards Christian.

“Oh, good for you!” he said, admiringly, “I was afraid to show up till you had got her.”

Christian was not sure that she was pleased at this intervention.

“How did you know where I was?”

“The servants told me you had gone to the kennels, and Jimmy showed me the hill, and then I spotted your white coat—­not that it’s so awfully white!—­I thought it was rather rotten to let you go alone.”

“And why not, pray?” enquired Christian, haughtily.  Male assumption of the duties of guardianship was a thing she found highly offensive; “I always go about alone!”

“Well, I wanted to come, anyway,” said Larry, with a placating grin.  “I say, that is an awful nice dog!”

“You never call foxhounds ’dogs’!” said Christian, still with hauteur; “Larry, you are an owl!”

But she enjoyed the consciousness of knowing more than he did; she even forgave him his superfluousness.  She thought it was rather decent of him to have come, and she let him lead Amazon for a part of the way, only reserving to herself the entry into the presence of Cottingham, bringing her sheaf with her.