and the perils of
resistance.

Before their lawful custodians had recovered from this spectacle, a tall
lady in black was suddenly merged in the _melee_, alternately calling
loudly and incongruously for "Bismarck," and blowing shrill blasts on a
whistle.

"If the tinker laves a sthroke of the pan on the misthress's dog, the
Lord help him!" said Patsey, starting in pursuit of Lily, who, with tail
tucked in and a wounded hind leg buckled up, was removing herself
swiftly from the scene of action.

Mrs. Alexander shoved her way into the cabin, through a filthy group of
gabbling male and female tinkers, and found herself involved in a wreck
of branches and ragged tarpaulin that had once formed a kind of tent,
but was now strewn on the floor by the incursion and excursion of the
chase. Earthquake throes were convulsing the tarpaulin; a tinker woman,
full of zeal, dashed at it and flung it back, revealing, amongst other
_debris_, an old wooden bedstead heaped with rags. On either side of one
of its legs protruded the passion-fraught faces of the coupled
hound-puppies, who, still linked together, had passed through the period
of unavailing struggle into a state of paralysed insanity of terror.
Muffled squeals and tinny crashes told that conflict was still raging
beneath the bed; the tinker women screamed abuse and complaint; and
suddenly the dachshund's long yellow nose, streaming with blood, worked
its way out of the folds. His mistress snatched at his collar and
dragged him forth, and at his heels followed an infuriated tom cat,
which, with its tail as thick as a muff, went like a streak through the
confusion, and was lost in the dark ruin of the chimney.

Mrs. Alexander stayed for no explanations: she extricated herself from
the tinker party, and, filled with a righteous wrath, went forth to look
for her son. From a plantation three fields away came the asphyxiated
bleats of the horn and the desolate bawls of Patsey Crimmeen. Mrs.
Alexander decided that it was better for the present to leave the
_personnel_ of the Craffroe Hunt to their own devices.

It was but three days before these occurrences that Mr. Freddy Alexander
had stood on the platform of the Craffroe Station, with a throbbing
heart, and a very dirty paper in his hand containing a list of eighteen
names, that ranged alphabetically from "Batchellor" to "Warior." At his
elbow stood a small man with a large moustache, and the thinnest legs
that were ever butto