show you," said the boy, getting very impatient, "if you will
just leave off crying like a great baby, and come to any place you like
where he has been to-day and left a mark--"

"Ah!" cried Lady Bassett.

"I'm a poacher," repeated Reginald, quite proudly; "you forget that."

"Come with me," cried Lady Bassett, starting up. She whipped on her
bonnet, and ran with him down the lawn.

"There, Reginald," said she, panting, "I think my darling was here this
afternoon; yes, yes, he must; for he had a key of the door, and it is
open."

"All right," said Reginald; "come into the field."

He ran about like a dog hunting, and soon found marks among the
cowslips.

"Somebody has been gathering a nosegay here to-day," said he; "now,
mamma, there's only two ways put of this field--let us go straight to
that gate; that is the likeliest."

Near the gate was some clay, and Reginald showed her several prints of
small feet.

"Look," said he, "here's the track of two--one's a gal; how I know,
here's a sole to this shoe no wider nor a knife. Come on."

In the next field he was baffled for a long time; but at last he found
a place in a dead hedge where they had gone through.

"See," said he, "these twigs are fresh broken, and here's a bit of the
gal's frock. Oh! won't she catch it?":

"Oh, you brave, clever boy!" cried Lady Bassett.

"Come on!" shouted the urchin.

He hunted like a beagle, and saw like a bird, with his savage,
glittering eye. He was on fire with the ardor of the chase; and, not to
dwell too long on what has been so often and so well written by others,
in about an hour and a half he brought the anxious, palpitating, but
now hopeful mother, to the neighborhood of Bassett's wood. Here he
trusted to his own instinct. "They have gone into the wood," said he,
"and I don't blame 'em. I found my way here long before his age. I say,
don't you tell; I've snared plenty of the governor's hares in that
wood."

He got to the edge of the wood and ran down the side. At last he found
the marks of small feet on a low bank, and, darting over it, discovered
the fainter traces on some decaying leaves inside the wood.

"There," said he; "now it is just as if you had got them in your
pocket, for they'll never find their way out of this wood. Bless your
heart, why _I_ used to get lost in it at first."

"Lost in the wood!" cried Lady Bassett; "but he will die of fear, or be
eaten by wild beasts; and it is getting so dark."