y?" asked Mrs. Hoopington suddenly of the
unusually silent Vladimir.

"Nothing--nothing worth speaking of," said the boy.

Norah's heart, which had stood still for a space, made up for lost time
with a most disturbing bound.

"I wish you'd find something that was worth speaking about," said the
hostess; "every one seems to have lost their tongues."

"When did Smithers last see that fox?" said the Major.

"Yesterday morning; a fine dog-fox, with a dark brush," confided Mrs.
Hoopington.

"Aha, we'll have a good gallop after that brush to-morrow," said the
Major, with a transient gleam of good humour. And then gloomy silence
settled again round the tea-table, a silence broken only by despondent
munchings and the occasional feverish rattle of a teaspoon in its saucer.
A diversion was at last afforded by Mrs. Hoopington's fox-terrier, which
had jumped on to a vacant chair, the better to survey the delicacies of
the table, and was now sniffing in an upward direction at something
apparently more interesting than cold tea-cake.

"What is exciting him?" asked his mistress, as the dog suddenly broke
into short angry barks, with a running accompaniment of tremulous whines.

"Why," she continued, "it's your game-bag, Vladimir! What _have_ you got
in it?"

"By Gad," said the Major, who was now standing up; "there's a pretty warm
scent!"

And then a simultaneous idea flashed on himself and Mrs. Hoopington.
Their faces flushed to distinct but harmonious tones of purple, and with
one accusing voice they screamed, "You've shot the fox!"

Norah tried hastily to palliate Vladimir's misdeed in their eyes, but it
is doubtful whether they heard her. The Major's fury clothed and
reclothed itself in words as frantically as a woman up in town for one
day's shopping tries on a succession of garments. He reviled and railed
at fate and the general scheme of things, he pitied himself with a
strong, deep pity too poignent for tears, he condemned every one with
whom he had ever come in contact to endless and abnormal punishments. In
fact, he conveyed the impression that if a destroying angel had been lent
to him for a week it would have had very little time for private study.
In the lulls of his outcry could be heard the querulous monotone of Mrs.
Hoopington and the sharp staccato barking of the fox-terrier. Vladimir,
who did not understand a tithe of what was being said, sat fondling a
cigarette and repeating under his breath from