had skirmished
round at a hand gallop, in search of recruits to reinforce Ormiston,
and Iles, and a small army of beaters, battling against the blazing
line that threatened destruction to the fir avenue. Now and again, with
a mighty roar, which sent Dickie's heart into his mouth, great tongues
of flame, clear as topaz and ruby in the steady sunshine, would leap
upwards, converting a whole tall fir into a tree of fire, while the
beaters running back, grimed with smoke and sweat, took a moment's
breathing-space in the open.

There had been more peaceful pastimes as well--several days' fishing,
enchanting beyond the power of language to describe. The clear
trout-stream meandering through the rich water-meadows; the herds of
cattle standing knee-deep in the grass, lazily chewing the cud and
switching their tails at the cloud of flies; the birds and wild
creatures haunting the streamside; the long dreamy hours of gentle
sport, had opened up to Dickie a whole new world of romance. His
donkey-chair had been left at the yellow-washed mill beneath the grove
of silvery-leaved, ever-rustling, balsam poplars. And thence, while
Ormiston and Mary sauntered slowly on ahead, the men--Winter in mufti,
oblivious of plate-cleaning and cellarage, and the onerous duties of
his high estate, Stamp, the water-bailiff, and Moorcock, one of the
under-keepers--had carried him across the great green levels. Winter
was an old and tried friend, and it was somewhat diverting to behold
him in this novel aspect, affable and chatty with inferiors,
displaying, moreover, unexpected knowledge in the mysteries of the
angler's craft. The other two men--sharp-featured, their faces ruddy as
summer apples, merry-eyed, clad in velveteen coats, that bulged about
the pockets, and wrinkled leather gaiters reaching halfway up the
thigh--charmed Richard, when his first shyness was passed. They were
eager to please him. Their talk was racy. Their laughter ready and
sincere. Did not Stamp point out to him a water-ouzel, with impudently
jerking tail, dipping and wading in the shallows of the stream? Did not
Moorcock find him a water-rail's nest, hidden in a tuft of reeds and
grass, with ten, yellowish, speckled eggs in it? And did not both men
pluck him handfuls of cowslips, of tawny-pink avens, and of mottled,
snake-headed fritillaries, and stow them away in the fishing-baskets
above the load of silver-and-red spotted trout?

Mary had protested Dickie could throw a f