ps drew near.
Then there were frantic snuffings under the doors, and a general
agitation. She looked through the little eye-hole into the middle yard.
Yes; there they were, fourteen or fifteen couple, tumultuously excited,
as if they knew she was there: white and black and tan, pointed noses,
beautiful intelligent eyes, bright tan spots upon marked brows, some
with a streak of white running down the long sharp noses, some heavy in
the jowl, some with muzzles sharp as a greyhound's, thirty tails erect
and agitated.

The feeder remembered Miss Tempest perfectly, though it was more than
three years since her last visit.

"Would you like to go in and see 'em, miss?" he said.

"Yes, if you please, Dawson. You have Gauntlet still, I see. That is
Gauntlet, isn't it? And Dart, and Juno, and Ringlet, and Artful?"

"Yes, miss. There ain't many gone since you was here. But there's a lot
o' poppies. You'd like to see the poppies, wouldn't you, miss? They be
in the next kennel, if you'll just wait five minutes."

Cleanliness was the order of the day at the kennels, but to do the late
master's daughter more honour, Dawson the feeder called a
bright-looking lad, his subordinate, and divers pails of water were
fetched, and the three little yards washed out vigorously before Miss
Tempest was invited to enter. When she did go in, the yard was empty
and clean as a new pin. The hounds had been sent into their house,
where they were all grouped picturesquely on a bench littered with
straw, looking as grave as a human parliament, and much wiser. Nothing
could be more beautiful than their attitudes, or more intelligent than
their countenances.

Vixen looked in at them through the barred window.

"Dear things," she exclaimed; "they are as lovely as ever. How fond
papa was of them."

And then the kennel-huntsman, who had appeared on the scene by this
time, opened the door and smacked his whip; and the fifteen couple came
leaping helter-skelter out into the little yard, and made a rush at
Vixen, and surrounded her, and fawned upon her, and caressed her as if
their recognition of her after long years was perfect, and as if they
had been breaking their hearts for her in the interval. Perhaps they
would have been just as affectionate to the next comer, having a large
surplus stock of love always on hand ready to be lavished on the human
race; but Vixen took these demonstrations as expressive of a peculiar
attachment, and was moved to tear