after the pony.

* * * * *

The afternoon was very cold, a fact thoroughly realised by Mrs.
Alexander, on the front seat of Sir George's motor-car, in spite of
enveloping furs, and of Bismarck, curled like a fried whiting, in her
lap. The grey road rushed smoothly backwards under the broad tyres;
golden and green plover whistled in the quiet fields, starlings and huge
missel thrushes burst from the wayside trees as the "Bollee," uttering
that hungry whine that indicates the desire of such creatures to devour
space, tore past. Mrs. Alexander wondered if birds' beaks felt as cold
as her nose after they had been cleaving the air for an afternoon; at
all events, she reflected, they had not the consolation of tea to look
forward to. Barnet was sure to have some of her best hot cakes ready
for Freddy when he came home from hunting. Mrs. Alexander and Sir
George had been scouring the roads since a very early lunch in search of
the hounds, and her mind reposed on the thought of the hot cakes.

The front lodge gates stood wide open, the motor-car curved its flight
and skimmed through. Half-way up the avenue they whizzed past three
policemen, one of whom was carrying on his back a strange and wormlike
thing.

"Janet," called out Sir George, "you've been caught making potheen!
They've got the worm of a still there."

"They're only making a short cut through the place from the bog; I'm
delighted they've found it!" screamed back Mrs. Alexander.

The "Bollee" was at the hall door in another minute, and the mistress of
the house pulled the bell with numbed fingers. There was no response.

"Better go round to the kitchen," suggested her brother. "You'll find
they're talking too hard to hear the bell."

His sister took the advice, and a few minutes afterwards she opened the
hall door with an extremely perturbed countenance.

"I can't find a creature anywhere," she said, "either upstairs or
down--I can't understand Barnet leaving the house empty--"

"Listen!" interrupted Sir George, "isn't that the hounds?"

They listened.

"They're hunting down by the back avenue! come on, Janet!"

The motor-car took to flight again; it sped, soft-footed, through the
twilight gloom of the back avenue, while a disjointed, travelling
clamour of hounds came nearer and nearer through the woods. The
motor-car was within a hundred yards of the back lodge, when out of the
rhododendron-bush burst a spectral black-a