a dhrag, and they have little Danny Casey below to
screech he seen the fox--"

At the same instant the whimpers swelled into a far-away chorus, that
grew each moment fainter and more faint. Much as Mr. Denny desired to
undertake the capture of the imparters of these interesting facts, he
knew that he had now no time to attempt it, and, with a shout to Mary,
he started the colt at full gallop up the rough hillside, round the
covert, while the grey pony scuttled after him as nimbly as a rabbit.
The colt seemed to realise the stress of the occasion, and jumped
steadily enough; but the last fence on to the road was too much for his
nerves, and, having swerved from it with discomposing abruptness, he
fell to his wonted tactics of rearing and backing.

Mr. Denny permitted himself one minute in which to establish the
fruitlessness of spurs, whip and blasphemy in this emergency, and then,
descending to his own legs, he climbed over the fence into the road and
ran as fast as boots and tops would let him towards the point whence the
cry of the hounds was coming, ever more and more faintly. In a moment or
two he returned, out of breath, to where the faithful Mary awaited him.

"It's no good, Mary," he said, wiping the perspiration from his
forehead; "they're running like blazes to the south along through the
furze. I suppose the devils took it that way to humbug your father, and
then they'll turn for the bridge and run into Madore; and there's the
end of the hounds."

Mary, who regarded the hounds as the chief, if not the only, object of
existence, looked at him with scared eyes, while the colour died out of
her round cheeks.

"Will they be poisoned, Mr. Denny?" she gasped.

"Every man jack of them, if your father doesn't twig it's a drag, and
whip 'em off," replied Mr. Denny, with grim brevity.

"Couldn't we catch them up?" cried Mary, almost incoherent from
excitement and horror.

"They've gone half-a-mile by this, and that brute," this with an eye of
concentrated hatred at the colt, "won't jump a broom-stick."

"But let me try," urged Mary, maddened by the assumption of masculine
calm which Mr. Denny's despair had taken on; "or--oh, Mr. Denny, if you
rode 'Matchbox' yourself straight to Madore across the river, you'd be
in time to whip them off!"

"By Jove!" said Dinny Johnny, and was silent. I believe that was the
moment at which the identity of the future Mrs. Denny was made clear to
him.

"And you'll have to r