IV
"THE MAN THAT CAME TO BUY APPLES"
It had been freezing hard all the way home, and the Quaker skatedperilously once or twice on the northerly stretches. As I passed theforge near my gate I issued an order for frost-nails, and while I didso the stars were kindling like diamonds over the black ridge ofShreelane Hill.
The overture to the Frost Symphony had begun, with its usual beautiesand difficulties, and its leading theme was given forth in a missivefrom Flurry Knox, that awaited me on the hall table. Flurry'shandwriting was an unattractive blend of the laundress's bill, and therambling zigzags of the temperature chart, but he exhibited no more ofit than was strictly necessary in getting to the point. Would I shootat Aussolas the following day? There were a lot of cock in, and he hadwhipped up four guns in a hurry. There was a postscript, "BernardShute is coming. Tell Mrs. Yeates he didn't kill any one yet thisseason."
Since his marriage Flurry had been promoted to the position of agent tohis grandmother, old Mrs. Knox of Aussolas, and through theunfathomable mazes of their dealings and fights with each other, thefact remained that he had secured to himself the Aussolas shooting atabout half its market value. So Mrs. Knox said. Her grandson, on theother hand, had often informed me that the privilege "had him beggared,what with beaters and all sorts, and his grandmother's cattle turnedinto the woods destroying all the covert--let alone her poaching."Into the differences of such skilled combatants the prudent did notintrude themselves, but they accepted without loss of time suchinvitations to shoot at Aussolas as came their way. Notwithstandingthe buccaneerings of Flurry's grandmother, the woods of Aussolas, indecent weather, were usually good for fifteen to twenty couple of cock.
I sent my acceptance before mentioning to Philippa that Bernard Shutewas to be of the party. It was impossible to make Philippa understandthat those who shot Bernard's pheasants at Clountiss, could hardly doless than retaliate when occasion served. I had once, in a moment ofregrettable expansion, entertained my wife with an account of how anentire shooting party had successively cast themselves upon theirfaces, while the muzzle of Bernard's gun had followed, half way roundthe compass, a rabbit that had broken back. No damage had ensued, noteven to the rabbit, but I had supplied Philippa with a fact that was anunfortunate combination of a thorn in her pillow and a stone in hersling.
The frost held; it did more than hold, it gripped. As I drove toAussolas the fields lay rigid in the constraining cold; the trees wereas dead as the telegraph poles, and the whistle of the train came thinand ghostly across four miles of silent country. Everything was halfalive, with the single exception of the pony, which, filled with theidiotic exaltation that frost imparts to its race, danced upon itsfrost-nails, shied with untiring inventiveness, and made three severaland well-conceived attempts to bolt. Maria, with her nose upon mygaiter, shuddered uninterruptedly throughout the drive, partly becauseof the pinching air, partly in honour of the sovereign presence of thegun-case.
Old Mrs. Knox was standing on the steps as I walked round to the halldoor of Aussolas Castle. She held a silver bowl in her hand; on herhead, presumably as a protection against the cold, was a table-napkin;round her feet a throng of hens and pigeons squabbled for the bits thatshe flung to them from the bowl, and a furtive and distrustful peacockdarted a blue neck in among them from the outskirts.
"'Good-morrow, old Sir Thomas Erpingham,'" was Mrs. Knox's singulargreeting, "'a good soft pillow for that good grey head were better thana churlish turf of France'!"
My friendship with Mrs. Knox was now of several years' standing, and Iknew enough of her to gather that I stood rebuked for being late.
"Flurry arrived only half-an-hour ago! my first intimation of ashooting party," she continued, in the dictatorial voice that wasalways a shock when taken in connection with her beggar woman'scostume, "a nice time of day to begin to look for beaters! And theother feather-bed sportsmen haven't arrived yet. In old times theywould have had ten couple by this time, and then Mr. Flurry complainsof the shooting!"
She was here interrupted by the twitching of the table-napkin from herhead by her body-woman, who had advanced upon her from the rear, withthe reigning member of the dynasty of purple velvet bonnets in herhand. The bonnet was substituted for the table-napkin, much as a stageproperty is shoved on from the wings, and two bony hands, advancingfrom behind, tied the strings under Mrs. Knox's chin, while sheuninterruptedly fed the hens, and denounced the effeteness of moderncock-shooters. The hands descended and fixed a large pin in theuppermost of her mistress' shawls.
"Mullins, have done!" exclaimed Mrs. Knox, suddenly tearing herselffrom her captor, "you're an intolerable nuisance!"
"Oh, very well, ma'am, maybe you'd sooner go out with your head nakedand soak the cold!" returned Mullins, retiring with the honours of warand the table-napkin.
"Mullins and I get on famously," observed Mrs. Knox, crushing an emptyegg-shell with her yellow diamonded fingers and returning it to itsoriginal donors, "we're both mad, you know!"
Comment on this might have been difficult, but I was preserved from itby the approach across the frozen gravel of a short, red-bearded man,Mrs. Knox's gardener, wood-ranger, and ruling counsellor, John Kane.He held in his hands two large apples of arsenical hue, and, taking offhis hat to me with much dignity, addressed himself to the lady of thehouse.
"He says he'd sooner walk barefoot to Cork than to give three andfippence for the likes of them!"
"I'm sure I've no objection if he does," responded Mrs. Knox, turningthe silver bowl upside down over the scrimmaging hens and pigeons, "Idaresay it would be no novelty to him."
"And isn't that what I told him!" said John Kane, his voice at onceascending to the concert pitch of altercation, "I said to him if theLord Left'nant and the Pope was follying me around the yard of Aussolasoffering three and a penny for them apples they'd not get them! Surethe nuns gave us that much for windfalls that was only fit to be makingcherubs with!"
I might have been struck by the fitness, as well as the ingenuity, ofthis industry, but in some remote byway of my brain the remembrancewoke of a "black-currant cherub" prescribed by Mrs. Cadogan for sorethroats, and divined by Philippa to be a syrup. I turned away and lita cigarette in order to conceal my feelings from John Kane, round whosered beard the smoke of battle hung almost palpably.
"What's between you?" asked his mistress sharply.
"Three and a penny he's offering, ma'am!" declaimed her deputy, "forsheeps' noses that there isn't one in the country has but yourself!And not a brown farthing more would he give!--the consecrated blagyard!"
"AND NOT A BROWN FARTHING MORE WOULD HE GIVE"]
Anything less like a sheep's nose than Mrs. Knox's hooked beak, as shereceived this information, could hardly be imagined.
"You're half a fool, John Kane!" she snapped, "and the other half's notsensible! Go back and tell him Major Yeates is here and wants to buyevery apple I have!" She dealt me a wink that was the next thing to adig in the ribs. As she spoke a cart drawn by a cheerful-looking greypony, and conducted by a tall, thin man, came into view from thedirection of the yard. It rattled emptily, and proclaimed, as wasintended, the rupture of all business relations.
"See here, sir," said John Kane to me in one hoarse breath, "when he'sover-right the door I'll ask him the three and fippence again, and whenhe refuses, your Honour will say we should split the difference----"
The cart advanced, it passed the hall door with a dignity but littleimpaired by the pony's apprehensive interest in the peacock, and thetall man took off his hat to Mrs. Knox with as gloomy a respect as ifshe had been a funeral.
John Kane permitted to the salutation the full time due to it, in themanner of one who counts a semibreve rest, while the cart movedimplacably onwards. The exact, the psychic instant arrived.
"HONOMAUNDHIAOUL! SULLIVAN!" he shouted, with a full-blown burst offerocity, hurtling down the steps in pursuit, "will ye take them orlave them?"
To manifest, no
doubt, her complete indifference to the issue, Mrs.Knox turned and went into the house, followed by the majority of thehens, and left me to await my cue. The play was played out withinfinite credit to both artists, and at the full stretch of theirlungs; at the preordained moment I intervened with the conventionalimpromptu, and suggested that the difference should be split. Thecurtain immediately fell, and somewhere in the deep of the hall aglimpse of the purple bonnet told me that Mrs. Knox was in theauditorium.
When I rejoined her I found Flurry with her, and something in theatmosphere told that here also was storm.
"Well, take them! Take them all!" Mrs. Knox was saying in highindignation. "Take Mullins and the maids if you like! I daresay theymight be more use than the men!"
"They'll make more row, anyhow," said Flurry sourly. "I wonder is itthem that put down all the rabbit-traps I'm after seeing in thecoach-house this minute!"
"It may be _they_, but it certainly is not _them_," retorted Mrs. Knox,hitting flagrantly below the belt; "and if you want beaters found foryou, you should give me more than five minutes' warning----" Sheturned with the last word, and moved towards the staircase.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am," said John Kane, very respectfully, from thehall door, "that Sullivan brought this down for your Honour."
He placed on the table a bottle imperfectly wrapped in newspaper.
"Tell Sullivan," said Flurry, without an instant's hesitation, "that hemakes the worst potheen in the country, and I'll prosecute him forbringing it here, unless he comes out to beat with the rest of you."
Remembering my official position, I discreetly examined the barrels ofmy gun.
"You'll give him no such message!" screamed Mrs. Knox over the darkrail of the staircase. "Let him take himself and his apples off out ofthis!" Then, in the same breath, and almost the same key, "MajorYeates, which do you prefer, curry, or Irish stew?"
The _cuisine_ at Aussolas was always fraught with dark possibilities,being alternately presided over by bibulous veterans from Dublin, oraboriginal kitchenmaids off the estate. Feeling as Fair Rosamond mighthave felt when proffered the dagger or the bowl, I selected curry.
"Then curry it shall be," said Mrs. Knox, with a sudden and awfulaffability. In this gleam of stormy sunshine I thought it well towithdraw.
"Did you ever eat my grandmother's curry?" said Flurry to me, later, aswe watched Bernard Shute trying to back his motor into the coach-house.
I said I thought not.
"Well, you'd take a splint off a horse with it," said Mrs. Knox'sgrandson.
The Aussolas woods were full of birds that day. Birds bursting out ofholly bushes like corks out of soda-water bottles, skimming low underthe branches of fir trees, bolting across rides at a thousand miles anhour, swinging away through prohibitive tree tops, but to me hadbefallen the inscrutable and invincible accident of being "off my day,"and, by an equal unkindness, Fate had allotted to me the station nextFlurry. Every kind of bird came my way except the easy ones, and, as ageneral thing, when I had done no more than add a little pace to theirflight, they went down to Flurry, who never in my experience had beenoff his day, and they seldom went farther afield. The beaters,sportsmen every man of them, had a royal time. They flailed the bushesand whacked the tree trunks; the discordant chorus of "Hi cock! Hicock! Cock! Cock! Prrrr!" rioted through the peaceful woods, andevery other minute a yell of "Mark!" broke like a squib through thedin. The clamour, the banging of the guns, and the expectancy, keptthe nerves tingling; the sky between the grey branches was as blue asItaly's; despite fingers as icy as the gun-barrels, despite thespeechless reproach of Maria, slinking at my heels in unemployeddejection, I enjoyed every breath or the frosty day. After all, hit ormiss, a good day with the cock comes very near a good day with thehounds, without taking into consideration the comfortable fact that inthe former the risk is all on the side of the birds.
Little Bosanquet, the captain of coastguards, on my left, was doingremarkably well, so apparently, was Murray the D.I. of Police; howBernard Shute was faring I knew not, but he was certainly burning a lotof powder. At the end of the third beat I found myself beside Murray.His face was redder than usual, even his freckles conveyed animpression of impartially sprinkled cayenne pepper.
"Did you see Shute just now?" he demanded in a ferocious whisper. "Abird got up between us, and he blazed straight at me! Straight bang inmy face, I tell you! Only that I was in a dead line with the bird he'dhave got me!"
"I suppose that was about the safest place," I said. "What did you do?"
"I simply told him that if ever he puts a grain into me I shall let himhave it back, both barrels."
"Every one says that to Bernard sooner or later," said I, pacifically;"he'll settle down after lunch."
"We'll all settle down into our graves," grumbled Murray; "that'll bethe end of it."
After this it was scarcely composing to a husband and father to findMr. Shute occupying the position on my right hand as we embarked uponthe last beat of the Middle Wood. He was still distinctly unsettled,and most distressingly on the alert. Nothing escaped his vigilance,the impossible wood pigeon, clattering out of the wrong side of a firtree, received its brace of cartridges as instantly as the palpablerabbit, fleeing down the ride before him, and with an equal immunity.Between my desire to keep the thickest tree trunks between me and him,and the companion desire that he should be thoroughly aware of mywhereabouts, my shooting, during that beat, went still more to pieces;a puff of feathers, wandering softly down through the radiant air, wasthe sum total of my achievements.
The end of the beat brought us to the end of the wood, and out upon anopen space of sedgy grass and bog that stretched away on the right tothe shore of Aussolas Lake; opposite to us, a couple of hundred yardsaway, was another and smaller wood, clothing one side of a highpromontory near the head of the lake. Flurry and I were first out ofthe covert.
"We'll have time to run through the Rhododendron Wood before lunch," hesaid, looking at his watch. "Here! John Kane!" He put two fingers inhis mouth and projected a whistle that cleft my head like a scimitar.
John Kane emerged, nymph-like, from a laurel bush in our immediatevicinity.
"'Tis only lost time to be beating them rosydandhrums, Master Flurry,"he said volubly, "there wasn't a bird in that bit o' wood this winter.Not a week passes but I'm in it, making up the bounds fence against thecattle, and I never seen a one!"
"You might be more apt to be looking out for a rabbit than a cock,John," said Flurry expressionlessly, "but isn't it down in the lowerpaddocks you have the cattle and the young horses this hard weather?"
"Oh it is, sir, it is, of course, but indeed it's hard for me to knowwhere they are, with the Misthress telling this one and that one to putthem in their choice place. Sure she dhrives me to and fro in my mindtill I do have a headache from her!"
A dull rumble came to us across the marsh, and, as if Mrs. Knox hadbeen summoned by her henchman's accusation, there laboured into view onthe road that skirted the marsh a long and dilapidated equipage,silhouetted, with its solitary occupant, against the dull shine of thefrozen lake.
"Tally-ho! Here comes the curry for you, Major! You'll have to eat itI tell you!" He paused, "I'm dashed if she hasn't got Sullivan's pony!Well, she'd steal the horns off a cow!"
"I'M DASHED IF SHE HASN'T GOT SULLIVAN'S PONY"]
It was indeed the grey pony that paced demurely in the shafts of Mrs.Knox's phaeton, and at its head marched Sullivan; fragments of loud andapparently agreeable conversation reached us, as the procession movedonwards to the usual luncheon tryst at the head of the lake.
"Come now, John Kane," said Flurry, eyeing the cortege, "you're halfyour day sitting in front of the kitchen fire. How many of my rabbitswent into that curry?''
"Rabbits, Master Flurry?" echoed John Kane almost pityingly, "there'sno call for them trash in Aussolas kitchen! And if we wanted themitself, we'd not get them. I declare to me conscience there's not arabbit in Auss
olas demesne this minute, with the way your Honour hasthem ferreted--let alone the foxes!----"
"I suppose it's scarcely worth your while to put the traps down," saidFlurry benignly; "that's why they were in the coach-house this morning."
There was an undissembled titter from a group of beaters in thebackground; Flurry tucked his gun under his arm and walked on.
"It'd be no more than a charity if ye'd eat the lunch now, sir," urgedJohn Kane at his elbow, in fluent remonstrance, "and leave Sullivan gohome. Sure it'll be black night on him before the Misthress will bedone with him. And as for that wood, it's hardly we can go through itwith the threes that's down since the night of the Big Wind, andbriars, and all sorts. Sure the last time I was through it me pantswas in shreds, and I was that tired when I got home I couldn't stoop topick a herrin' off a tongs, and as for the floods and the holes in thewestern end--" John Kane drew a full breath, and with a trawlingglance gathered Bernard and me into his audience. "I declare to ye,gintlemen, me boots when I took them off was more than boots! Theyresimbled the mouth of a hake!"
"Ah, shut your own mouth," said Flurry.
The big rhododendron was one of the glories of Aussolas. Its originalprogenitor had been planted by Flurry's great-grandmother, and now,after a century of unchecked license, it and its descendants ran riotamong the pine stems on the hillside above the lake, and, in June,clothed a precipitous half acre with infinite varieties of palemysterious mauve. The farm road by which Mrs. Knox had traversed themarsh, here followed obediently the spurs of the wood and creeks of theshore, in their alternate give and take. From the exalted station thathad been given me on the brow of the hill, I looked down on it betweenthe trunks of the pine trees, and saw, instead of mysterious mauveblossoms, the defiant purple of Mrs. Knox's bonnet, glowing,motionless, in a sheltered and sunny angle of the road just where itmet the wood. She was drawn up in her phaeton with her back to atumble-down erection of stones and branches, that was supposed to barthe way into the wood, beside her was the great flat boulder that hadfor generations been the table for shooting lunches. How, in any areaof less than a quarter of a mile, Sullivan had contrived to turn thephaeton, was known only to himself, but he had accomplished it, and wasnow adding to the varied and unforeseen occupations of his day the taskof unpacking the luncheon basket. As I waited for the whistle that wasthe signal for the beat to begin, I viewed the proceedings up to thepoint where Sullivan, now warming artistically to his work, crowned thearrangement with the bottle of potheen.
HE CROWNED THE ARRANGEMENT WITH THE BOTTLE OF POTHEEN]
It was at that moment that I espied John Kane break from a rhododendronbush beside the phaeton, with a sack over his shoulder. This, as faras I could see through the branches, he placed upon Mrs. Knox's lap,the invaluable Sullivan hurrying to his aid. The next instant I sawMurray arrive and take up his allotted station upon the road; John Kaneretired into the evergreen thicket as abruptly as he had emerged fromit, Flurry's whistle sounded, and the yells of "Hi cock" began again.
We moved forward very slowly, in order to keep station with Murray, whohad to follow on the road the outer curve of the wood, while we struckstraight across it. It was a wood of old and starveling trees,strangled by ivy, broken by combat with each other in the storms thatrushed upon them up the lake; it was two years since I had last beenthrough it, and I remembered well the jungle of ferns and theundergrowth of briars that had shredded the pants of John Kane, and hadheld in their thorny depths what Flurry had described as "a dose ofcock." To-day the wood seemed strangely bare, and remarkably out ofkeeping with John Kane's impassioned indictment; the ferns, even thebracken, had almost disappeared, the briar brakes were broken down, andlaced with black paths, and in the frozen paste of dead leaves and peatmould the hoof-marks of cattle and horses bore witness against them,like the thumb-prints of a criminal. In the first ten minutes not agun had been let off; I anticipated pleasantly, if inadequately, theremarks that Flurry would address to John Kane at the conclusion of thebeat. To foreshadow John Kane's reply to Flurry was a matter lesssimple. Bernard Shute was again the next gun on my left, and kept, aswas his wont, something ahead of his due place in the line; of this Idid not complain, it made it all the easier to keep my eye on him. Theidle cartridges in his gun were obviously intolerable to him; as hecrossed a little glade he discharged both barrels into the firmament,where far above, in tense flight and steady as a constellation, moved awedge of wild geese. The wedge continued its course unshaken, but, asif lifted by the bang, the first woodcock of the beat got up in frontof me, and swung away into the rhododendrons. "Mark!" I shouted,loosing an ineffectual cartridge after him. Mr. Shute was equal to theoccasion, and let fly his usual postman's knock with both barrels. Ininstant response there arose from behind the rhododendrons the bray ofa donkey, fraught with outrage and terror, followed by crashing ofbranches and the thunderous galloping of many hoofs, and I had aglimpse of a flying party of cattle and horses, bursting from therhododendron bushes and charging down a grassy slope in the directionof the road. Every tail was in the air, the cattle bellowed, and thedonkey, heading the flight, did not cease to proclaim his injuries.
"How many of them have you hit?" I shouted.
"I believe I got 'em all, bar the cock!" returned Mr. Shute, withecstasy scarcely tempered by horror.
I hastened to the brow of the hill, and thence beheld Mrs. Knox's livestock precipitate themselves on to the road, and turn as one man in thedirection of home. With a promptitude for which I have never beengiven sufficient credit, I shoved my gun into the branches of a treeand ran back through the wood at my best pace. In that glimpse of theroute I had recognised the streaming chestnut mane and white legs ofthe venerable Trinket, the most indomitable old rogue that had everreared up generations of foals in the way they should not go, and Iknew by repute that once she was set going it would take more to stopher than the half-demolished barricade at the entrance to the wood.
As I ran I seemed to see Trinket and her disciples hurling themselvesupon Mrs. Knox's phaeton and Sullivan's pony, with what results no mancould tell. They had, however, first to circumnavigate the promontory;my chance was by crossing it at the neck to get to the phaeton beforethem. The going was bad, and the time was short; I went for all I wasworth, and Maria, mystified, but burning with zeal, preceded me withkangaroo leaps and loud and hysterical barks. A mossy wall ringed theverge of the hill; I followed Maria over it, and the wall, or a goodpart of it, followed me down the hill. I plunged onward amid thecoiling stems and branches of the big rhododendrons, an illuminativeflash of the purple bonnet giving me my bearings. A sort of trackrevealed itself, doubling and dodging and dropping down rocky slides,as if in flight before me. It was near the foot of the hill that adead branch extended a claw, and with human malignity plucked theeye-glass from my eye and snapped the cord: the eye-glass, enteringinto the spirit of the thing, aimed for the nearest stone and hit it.It is the commonest of disasters for the short-sighted, yet customcannot stale it; I made the usual comment, with the usual fervour andfutility, and continued to blunder forward in all the discomfort ofhalf-sight. The trumpeting of the donkey heralded the oncoming of thestampede; I broke my way through the last of the rhododendrons andtumbled out on to the road twenty yards ahead of the phaeton.
Sullivan's pony was on its hind legs, and Sullivan was hanging on toits head. Mrs. Knox was sitting erect in the phaeton with the reins inher hand.
"Get out, ma'am! Get out!" Sullivan was howling, as I scrambled to myfeet.
"Don't be a fool!" replied Mrs. Knox, without moving.
The stampede was by this time confronted by the barrier. There wasnot, however, a moment of hesitation; Trinket came rocketing out overit as if her years were four, instead of four-and-twenty; she landedwith her white nose nearly in the back seat of the phaeton, got pastwith a swerve and a slip up, and went away for her stable with her tailover her back, followed with stag-like agility by her last foal, herlast foal but one, an
d the donkey, with the young cattle hard on theirflying heels. Bernard, it was very evident, had peppered themimpartially all round. Sullivan's pony was alternately rampingheraldically, and wriggling like an eel in the clutches of Sullivan,and I found myself snatching blindly at whatever came to my hand of hisheadstall. What I caught was a mingled handful of forelock andbrow-band; the pony twitched back his head with the cunning that isinnate in ponies, and the head-stall, which was a good two sizes toolarge, slid over its ears as though they had been buttered, andremained, bit and all, in my hand. There was a moment of struggle, inwhich Sullivan made a creditable effort to get the pony's head intochancery under his arm; foreseeing the issue, I made for the old lady,with the intention of dragging her from the carriage. She was at theside furthest from me, and I got one foot into the phaeton and graspedat her.
At that precise moment the pony broke away, with a jerk that pitched meon to my knees on the mat at her feet. Simultaneously I was aware ofSullivan, at the opposite side, catching Mrs. Knox to his bosom as thephaeton whirled past him, while I, as sole occupant, wallowed proneupon a heap of rugs. That ancient vehicle banged in and out of theruts with an agility that ill befitted its years, while, with extremecaution, and the aid of the side rail, I gained the seat vacated byMrs. Knox, and holding on there as best I could, was aware that I wasbeing seriously run away with by the apple-man's pony, on whom my owndisastrous hand had bestowed his freedom.
The flying gang in front, enlivened no doubt by the noise in theirrear, maintained a stimulating lead. We were now clear of the wood,and the frozen ditches of the causeway awaited me on either side insteely parallel lines; out in the open the frost had turned the ruts toiron, and it was here that the phaeton, entering into the spirit of thething, began to throw out ballast. The cushions of the front seat werethe first to go, followed, with a bomb-like crash, by a stone hot-waterjar, that had lurked in the deeps of the rugs. It was in negotiating astiffish outcrop of rock in the track that the back seat broke looseand fell to earth with a hollow thump; with a corresponding thump Ireturned to my seat from a considerable altitude, and found that in theinterval the cushion had removed itself from beneath me, and followedits fellows overboard. Near the end of the causeway we were intoTrinket's rearguard, one of whom, a bouncing young heifer, slammed akick into the pony's ribs as he drew level with her, partly as awitticism, partly as a token of contempt. With that the end came. Thepony wrenched to the left, the off front wheel jammed in a rut, cameoff, and the phaeton rose like a live thing beneath me and bucked meout on to the road.
A succession of crashes told that the pony was making short work of thedash-board; for my part, I lay something stunned, and with a twistedankle, on the crisp whitened grass of the causeway, and wondered dullywhy I was surrounded by dead rabbits.
By the time I had pulled myself together Sullivan's pony was continuinghis career, accompanied by a fair proportion of the phaeton, and on theroad lay an inexplicable sack, with a rabbit, like Benjamin's cup, inits mouth.
Not less inexplicable was the appearance of Minx, my wife'sfox-terrier, whom I had last seen in an arm-chair by the drawing-roomfire at Shreelane, and now, in the role of the faithful St. Bernard,was licking my face lavishly and disgustingly. Her attentions had thetraditional reviving effect. I sat up and dashed her from me, and inso doing beheld my wife in the act of taking refuge in the frozenditch, as the cavalcade swept past, the phaeton and pony bringing upthe rear like artillery.
"What has happened? Are you hurt?" she panted, speeding to me.
"I am; very much hurt," I said, with what was, I think, justifiableill-temper, as I got gingerly on to my feet, almost annoyed to findthat my leg was not broken.
"But, dearest Sinclair, _has_ he shot you? I got so frightened aboutyou that I bicycled over to-- Ugh! Good gracious!"--as she trod onand into a mound of rabbits--"what are you doing with all thesehorrible things?"
I looked back in the direction from which I had come, and saw Mrs. Knoxadvancing along the causeway arm-in-arm with the now inevitableSullivan (who, it may not be out of place to remind the reader, hadcome to Aussolas early in the morning, with the pure and singleintention of buying apples). In Mrs. Knox's disengaged arm wassomething that I discerned to be the bottle of potheen, and I instantlyresolved to minimise the extent of my injuries. Flurry, and variousitems of the shooting party, were converging upon us from the wood byas many and various short cuts. "I don't quite know what I am doingwith the rabbits," I replied, "but I rather think I'm giving them away."
As I spoke something darted past Mrs. Knox, something that looked likea bundle of rags in a cyclone, but was, as a matter of fact, myfaithful water-spaniel, Maria. She came on in zig-zag bounds, in shortmaniac rushes. Twice she flung herself by the roadside and rolled,driving her snout into the ground like the coulter of a plough. Hereyes were starting from her head, her tail was tucked between her legs.She bit, and tore frantically with her claws at the solid ice of apuddle.
"She's mad! She's gone mad!" exclaimed Philippa, snatching up as aweapon something that looked like a frying-pan, but was, I believe, thestep of the phaeton.
Maria was by this time near enough for me to discern a canary-colouredsubstance masking her muzzle.
"Yes, she's quite mad," I replied, possessed by a spirit of divination."She's been eating the rabbit curry."
Chapter IV tailpiece]
Further Experiences of an Irish R.M. Page 5