n a very tall
horse.

Just as Taffy recognised her, she turned her horse, walked him down
into the hollow beyond, and disappeared. Taffy ran towards the spot,
gained the ridge where she had been standing, and looked down.

In a hollow about twenty feet deep and perhaps a hundred wide were
gathered a dozen riders, with five or six couples of hounds and two
or three dirty terriers. Two of the men had dismounted. One of
these, stripped to his shirt and breeches, was leaning on a
long-handled spade and laughing. The other--a fellow in a shabby
scarlet coat--held up what Taffy guessed to be a fox, though it
seemed a very small one. It was bleeding. The hounds yapped and
leapt at it, and fell back a-top of each other snarling, while the
Whip grinned and kept them at bay. A knife lay between his
wide-planted feet, and a visgy[1] close behind him on a heap of
disturbed sand.

The boy came on them from the eastward, and his shadow fell across
the hollow.

"Hullo!" said one of the riders, looking up. It was Squire Moyle
himself. "Here's the new Passon's boy!"

All the riders looked up. The Whip looked up too, and turned to the
old Squire with a wider grin than before.

"Shall I christen en, maister?"

The Squire nodded. Before Taffy knew what it meant, the man was
climbing toward him with a grin, clutching the rush bents with one
hand, and holding out the blood-dabbled mask with the other.
The child turned to run, but a hand clutched his ankle. He saw the
man's open mouth and yellow teeth; and, choking with disgust and
terror, slung his boots at them with all his small force. At the
same instant he was jerked off his feet, the edge of the bank
crumbled and broke, and the two went rolling down the sandy slope in
a heap. He heard shouts of laughter, caught a glimpse of blue sky,
felt a grip of fingers on his throat, and smelt the verminous odour
of the dead cub, as the Whip thrust the bloody mess against his face
and neck. Then the grip relaxed, and--it seemed to him, amid dead
silence--Taffy sprang to his feet, spitting sand and fury.

"You--you devils!" He caught up the visgy and stood, daring all to
come on. "You devils!" He tottered forward with the visgy lifted--it
was all he could manage--at Squire Moyle. The old man let out an
oath, and the curve of his whip-thong took the boy across the eyes
and blinded him for a moment, but did not stop him. The grey horse
swerved, and half-wheeled, exposing