et from the scent of
the white-thorn and the lilacs and a thousand other sweet and fresh
things as though some heavenly censer swung there. The thrushes and the
blackbirds were singing their wildest as is their custom about sunset;
and below their triumphant songs you could hear the whole chorus of the
little birds' voices as well as the fiddling and harping of the myriad
field-crickets and grasshoppers. Then from the field beyond the wood I
could hear the corncrakes sawing away in the yet unmown grass, and there
were a great many wood-doves uttering their soft laments.

I have always loved the things of nature; but on this evening they had
less power than usual to soothe me. The shame of my recent encounter
with Richard Dawson kept sending the colour to my cheeks and the little
shocks of repulsion through my blood. I felt that if he had really
kissed me I must have killed him or myself. My fingers twitched as I
thought on a certain dagger, little but deadly, which lay in a glass
case in the picture-gallery, and I resolved that I would carry it in my
breast for the future on my country rambles lest I should meet again
with such rudeness as I had met to-day and have nothing with which to
defend myself.

I was so engaged in my thoughts as I walked along that I had not noticed
how far ahead of me Dido had run. But suddenly she was brought to my
mind by the most horrible yelping which made me run as fast as ever I
ran in my life.

I came up with her in a little glade away from the main path, a mere
gamekeepers' passage, now much overgrown and choked up, for it was long
since we had kept gamekeepers. I had to creep on my hands and knees
through the briars and undergrowth to reach the place where she was,
which was a clear space in the midst of the tangle.

As soon as she saw me she left off yelping and waited for me with an air
of expectancy, as though she knew that I would soon put an end to her
discomfort.

But alas for the poor thing's faith in me, I saw when I came up to her
that her foot was caught in a trap, a horrible iron-toothed thing, the
like of which I had never seen before. It must have rusted there from
the old days till my poor dog by some accident had released it. I saw
that there were bones by it--the bones of some poor wild creature,
doubtless, who had perished in it, and the bones had no doubt acted as
a warning to the others.

As I knelt down Dido licked my face frantically, being quite sure I was