Congratulations: I hear the boy is a
Captain."

"We can't quite realize it," Norah said, laughing. "You see, we
hardly knew he had grown up!"

"Well, he grew to a good size," said Mrs. Ainslie, with a smile.
"Hullo, Geoff. Are you going to follow to-day?"

"They won't let me," said Geoffrey dolefully. "I know Brecon and I
could, but Mother says we're too small."

"Too bad!" said Mrs. Ainslie. "Never mind; you'll be big pretty
soon."

A tall old man in knickerbockers greeted her: Squire Brand, who owned
a famous property a few miles away, and who had the reputation of
never missing a meet, although he did not ride. He knew every inch of
the country; it was said that he could boast, at the end of a season,
that he had, on the whole, seen more of the runs than any one else
except the Master. He was a tireless runner, with an extraordinarily
long stride, which carried him over fields and ditches and gave him
the advantage of many a short cut impossible to most people. He knew
every hound by name; some said he knew every fox in the country; and
he certainly had an amazing knowledge of the direction a fox was
likely to take. Horses, on the other hand, bored him hopelessly; he
consented to drive them, in the days when motors were not, but merely
as a means of getting from place to place. A splendid car, with a
chauffeur much smarter than his master, had just dropped him: a grant
figure in weatherbeaten Harris tweeds, grasping a heavy stick.

"We should get a good run to-day," he said.

"Yes--with luck," Mrs. Ainslie answered.

"Any news from the Colonel?"

"Nothing in particular--plenty of hard fighting. But he never writes
much of that. He's much more interested in a run he had with a queer
scratch pack near their billets. I can't quite gather how it was
organized, but it comprised two beagles and a greyhound and a
fox-terrier and a pug. He said they had a very sporting time!"

Squire Brand chuckled.

"I don't doubt it," he said. "Did he say what they hunted?"

"Anything they could get, apparently. They began with a hare, and
then got on to a rabbit, in some mysterious fashion. They finished up
with a brisk run in the outskirts of a village, and got a kill--it
turned out this time to be a cat!" Mrs. Ainslie's rather grim
features relaxed into a smile. "If any one had told Val two years ago
that he would be enthusiastic over a day like that!"

A few other riders had come up: two or three offi