hen he came out into the yard both dogs saluted him by barking and
whining twice as much as they did before, the setter jumping up and down
at the end of his chain in a frenzy, and Nelly shivering, wagging her
tail, and looking first at her master and then at the house door, where
she could smell the fox right enough.

There was a bright moon, so that Mr. Tebrick could see the dogs as
clearly as could be. First he shot his wife's setter dead, and then
looked about him for Nelly to give her the other barrel, but he could
see her nowhere. The bitch was clean gone, till, looking to see how she
had broken her chain, he found her lying hid in the back of her kennel.
But that trick did not save her, for Mr. Tebrick, after trying to pull
her out by her chain and finding it useless--she would not come,--thrust
the muzzle of his gun into the kennel, pressed it into her body and so
shot her. Afterwards, striking a match, he looked in at her to make
certain she was dead. Then, leaving the dogs as they were, chained up,
Mr. Tebrick went indoors again and found the gardener, who had not yet
gone home, gave him a month's wages in lieu of notice and told him he
had a job for him yet--to bury the two dogs and that he should do it
that same night.

But by all this going on with so much strangeness and authority on his
part, as it seemed to them, the servants were much troubled. Hearing the
shots while he was out in the yard his wife's old nurse, or Nanny, ran
up to the bedroom though she had no business there, and so opening the
door saw the poor fox dressed in my lady's little jacket lying back in
the cushions, and in such a reverie of woe that she heard nothing.

Old Nanny, though she was not expecting to find her mistress there,
having been told that she was gone that afternoon to London, knew her
instantly, and cried out:

"Oh, my poor precious! Oh, poor Miss Silvia! What dreadful change is
this?" Then, seeing her mistress start and look at her, she cried out:
"But never fear, my darling, it will all come right, your old Nanny
knows you, it will all come right in the end."

But though she said this she did not care to look again, and kept her
eyes turned away so as not to meet the foxy slit ones of her mistress,
for that was too much for her. So she hurried out soon, fearing to be
found there by Mr. Tebrick, and who knows, perhaps shot, like the dogs,
for knowing the secret.

Mr. Tebrick had all this time gone about paying off