.
Behind him ran a pack of persons whose faces he could not see; they ran
like hounds, murmuring as they came in a terrible whining voice. Then
Jack understood that he could save Frank; he brought his gun to the
shoulder, aimed it at the brown of the pack and drew the trigger. A snap
followed, and he discovered that he was unloaded; he groped in his
cartridge-belt and found it empty.... He tore at his pockets, and found
at last one cartridge; and as he dashed it into the open breach, his gun
broke in half. Simultaneously the quarry vanished over an edge of hill,
and the pack followed, the leaders now not ten yards behind the flying
figure in front.

Jack stood there, helpless and maddened. Then he flung the broken pieces
of his gun at the disappearing runners; sank down in the gloom, and
broke out into that heart-shattering nightmare sobbing which shows that
the limit has been reached.

He awoke, still sobbing--certain that Frank was in deadly peril, if not
already dead, and it was a few minutes before he dared to go to sleep
once more.

CHAPTER II

(I)

The Rectory garden at Merefield was, obviously, this summer, the proper
place to spend most of the day. Certainly the house was cool--it was one
of those long, low, creeper-covered places that somehow suggest William
IV. and crinolines (if it is a fact that those two institutions
flourished together, as I think), with large, darkish rooms and wide,
low staircases and tranquil-looking windows through which roses peep;
but the shadow of the limes and the yews was cooler still. A table stood
almost permanently through those long, hot summer days in the place
where Dick had sat with Jenny, and here the Rector and his daughter
breakfasted, lunched and dined, day after day, for a really
extraordinarily long period.

Jenny herself lived in the garden even more than her father; she got
through the household business as quickly as possible after breakfast,
and came out to do any small businesses that she could during the rest
of the morning. She wrote a few letters, read a few books, sewed a
little, and, on the whole, presented a very domestic and amiable
picture. She visited poor people for an hour or so two or three days a
week, and occasionally, when Lord Talgarth was well enough, rode out
with him and her father after tea, through the woods, and sometimes with
Lord Talgarth alone.

She suffered practically no pangs of conscience at all on the subject of
Fr