poisoned fox.  Perhaps he was thinking, as itinerant masters often must think, that it was very hard to have to bear so many unpleasant things for a poor 2,000 pounds a year, and meditating, as he had done for the last two seasons, a threat that unless the money were increased, he wouldn’t hunt the country more than three times a week.  As Tony got near to the gorse and also near to the road he managed with infinite skill to get the hounds off the scent, and to make a fictitious cast to the left as though he thought the fox had traversed that way.  Tony knew well enough that the fox was at that moment in Littleton Gorse;—­but he knew also that the gorse was only six acres, that such a fox as he had before him wouldn’t stay there two minutes after the first hound was in it, and that Dillsborough Wood, which to his imagination was full of poison,—­ would then be only a mile and a half before him.  Tony, whose fault was a tendency to mystery,—­as is the fault of most huntsmen,—­ having accomplished his object in stopping the hounds, pretended to cast about with great diligence.  He crossed the road and was down one side of a field and along another, looking anxiously for the Captain.  “The fox has gone on to the gorse,” said the elder Botsey; “what a stupid old pig he is;”—­meaning that Tony Tuppet was the pig.

“He was seen going on,” said Larry, who had come across a man mending a drain.

“It would be his run of course,” said Hampton, who was generally up to Tony’s wiles, but who was now as much in the dark as others.  Then four or five rode up to the huntsman and told him that the fox had been seen heading for the gorse.  Tony said not a word but bit his lips and scratched his head and bethought himself what fools men might be even though they did ride well to hounds.  One word of explanation would have settled it all, but he would not speak that word till he whispered it to Captain Glomax.

In the meantime there was a crowd in the road waiting to see the result of Tony’s manoeuvres.  And then, as is usual on such occasions, a little mild repartee went about,—­what the sportsmen themselves would have called “chaff.”  Ned Botsey came up, not having broken his horse’s back as had been rumoured, but having had to drag the brute out of the brook with the help of two countrymen, and the Major was asked about his fall till he was forced to open his mouth.  “Double ditch; mare fell; matter of course.”  And then he got himself out of the crowd, disgusted with the littleness of mankind.  Lord Rufford had been riding a very big chestnut horse, and had watched the anxious struggles of Kate Masters to hold her place.  Kate, though fifteen, and quite up to that age in intelligence and impudence, was small and looked almost a child.  “That’s a nice pony of yours, my dear,” said the Lord.  Kate, who didn’t quite like being called “my dear,” but who knew that a lord has privileges, said that it was a very good pony.  “Suppose we change,” said his