stycke_, returned to him and was hooded
and leashed again; and sat there on his gloved wrist with wet claws, just
shivering slightly from her nerves, like the aristocrat she was; while
her master stroked her ashy back and the boy picked up the quarry,
admiring the deep rent before he threw it into the pannier.

Then Hubert had the next turn; but his falcon missed his first stoop, and
did not strike the quarry till the second attempt, thus scoring one to
Anthony's account. Then the peregrines were put back on the cadge as the
boys got near to a wide meadow in a hollow where the rabbits used to
feed; and the goshawks Margaret and Isabel were taken, each in turn
sitting unhooded on her master's wrist, while they all watched the long
thin grass for the quick movement that marked the passage of a
rabbit;--and then in a moment the bird was cast off. The goshawk would
rise just high enough to see the quarry in the grass, then fly straight
with arched wings and pounces stretched out as she came over the quarry;
then striking him between the shoulders would close with him; and her
master would come up and take her off, throw the rabbit to the
game-carrier; and the other would have the next attempt.

And so they went on for three or four hours, encouraging their birds,
whooping the death of the quarry, watching with all the sportsman's
keenness the soaring and stooping of the peregrines, the raking off of
the goshawks; listening to the thrilling tinkle of the bells, and taking
back their birds to sit triumphant and complacent on their master's
wrists, when the quarry had been fairly struck, and furious and sullen
when it had eluded them two or three times till their breath left them in
the dizzy rushes, and they "canceliered" or even returned disheartened
and would fly no more till they had forgotten--till at last the shadows
grew long, and the game more wary, and the hawks and ponies tired; and
the boys put up the birds on the cadge, and leashed them to it securely;
and jogged slowly homewards together up the valley road that led to the
village, talking in technical terms of how the merlin's feather must be
"imped" to-morrow; and of the relative merits of the "varvels" or little
silver rings at the end of the jesses through which the leash ran, and
the Dutch swivel that Squire Blackett always used.

As they got nearer home and the red roofs of the Dower House began to
glow in the ruddy sunlight above the meadows, Hubert began t