presently, if it was only that her mother should be saved alive.  But when he got to his woodcraft, John Meadows weren’t so pleased by any means, because he found another story told.  Where the girl had fainted and dropped in the water on seeing the Hound was clear to mark; but more than that John discovered, for all round about was the slot of a big dog with a great pad and claws; and, as if that weren’t enough, the keeper found something else also.

He stared then and stood back and scratched the hair on his nape.

“Beggar my shoes!” said John.  “This weren’t no devil-dog, but a living creature!  The Hound be a spirit and don’t leave no mark where he runs; but the dog that made these tracks weighs a hundred and fifty pound if he weighs an ounce; and look you here.  What be this?”

Well, Millicent looked and there weren’t no shadow of doubt as to what her father had found, for pressed in the mire and gravel at river edge was the prints of a tidy large boot.

William Parsloe came along at the moment; but he knew nought, though he put two and two together very clever.

“’Tis like this,” he said; “you ran into the poachers, Millicent, though what the blackguards was up to with a hugeous dog I couldn’t tell you.  And now I’ll lay my life that what I saw back along was the same creature and he whipped away and warned his masters.”

“But me?” asked the girl.  “Why for if I fainted and fell into the river, didn’t I drown there for you or father to find next day?”

“Yes,” added John.  “How came that to be, Bill?”

“I see it so clear as need be,” explained Parsloe, who had a quick mind.  “You fell in the water and the dog gave tongue.  The blackguards came along and, not wishful to add murder to their crimes, haled you out.  Then they carried you away from the water, loosened your neckerchief and finding you alive, left you to recover.”

“Dear God!” said Millicent, shivering all down her spine, “d’you mean to tell me an unknown poaching man carried me in his arms a hundred yards, William?”

“I mean that,” answered Parsloe, “and if we had the chap’s boot, we should know who ’twas.”

So they parted, and John he went home very angry indeed at such triumphant malefactors, and though Millicent tried her bestest to be angry also, such is the weakness of human nature that she couldn’t work up no great flood of rage.  And when she was alone in her bed that night, for it was her father’s turn to watch over her mother, she felt that unknown sinner’s arms around her again and his wicked hands at her neckerchief, and couldn’t help wondering what it would have been like if she’d come to and found herself in that awful position.

Then Milly Meadows recovered and John, along with William Parsloe, Harry Wade, and a few more stout men, plotted a plot for the poachers and combed the plantations on a secret night in a way as they’d never done afore; but they failed and had Dean Woods all to themselves, though the very next night there was another slaughter and a lot of birds lost.