Southminster's Ball

CHAPTER XVI. Rorie asks a Question

CHAPTER XVII. Where the Red King was slain

VIXEN.

CHAPTER I.

A Pretty Horsebreaker.

The moon had newly risen, a late October moon, a pale almost
imperceptible crescent, above the dark pine spires in the thicket
through which Roderick Vawdrey came, gun in hand, after a long day's
rabbit-shooting. It was not his nearest way home, but he liked the
broad clearing in the pine wood, which had a ghostly look at dusk, and
was so still and lonely that the dart of a squirrel through the fallen
leaves was a startling event. Here and there a sturdy young oak that
had been newly stripped of its bark lay among the fern, like the naked
corpse of a giant. Here and there a tree had been cut down and slung
across the track, ready for barking. The ground was soft and spongy,
slippery with damp dead leaves, and inclined in a general way to
bogginess; but it was ground that Roderick Vawdrey had known all his
life, and it seemed more natural to him than any other spot upon mother
earth.

On the edge of this thicket there was a broad ditch, with more mud and
dead fern in it than water, a ditch strongly suspected of snakes, and
beyond the ditch the fence that enclosed Squire Tempest's domain--an
old manor house in the heart of the New Forest. It had been an abbey
before the Reformation, and was still best known as the Abbey House.

"I wonder whether I'm too late to catch her," speculated Roderick,
shifting his bag from one shoulder to the other; "she's no end of fun."

In front of the clearing there was a broad five-barred gate, and
beside the gate a keeper's cottage. The flame of a newly-lighted candle
flashed out suddenly upon the autumn dusk, while Roderick stood
looking at the gate.

"I'll ask at the lodge," he said; "I should like to say good-bye to the
little thing before I go back to Oxford."

He walked quickly on to the gate. The keeper's children were playing at
nothing particular just inside it.

"Has Miss Tempest gone for her ride this afternoon?" he asked.

"Ya-ase," drawled the eldest shock-headed youngster.

"And not come back yet?"

"Noa. If she doant take care her'll be bogged."

Roderick hitched his bag on to the top of the gate, and stood at ease
waiting. It was late for the little lady of Tempest Manor to be out on
her pony; but then it was an understood thing within a radius of ten
miles or so that she was a self-willed young pe