ws and only seeing one man, called Askew, who had been brought up a
jockey at Wantage, but was grown too big for his profession. He mounted
this loafing fellow on one of his horses three days a week and had him
follow the hunt and report to him whenever they killed, and if he could
view the fox so much the better, and then he made him describe it
minutely, so he should know if it were his Silvia. But he dared not
trust himself to go himself, lest his passion should master him and he
might commit a murder.

Every time there was a hunt in the neighbourhood he set the gates wide
open at Rylands and the house doors also, and taking his gun stood
sentinel in the hope that his wife would run in if she were pressed by
the hounds, and so he could save her. But only once a hunt came near,
when two fox-hounds that had lost the main pack strayed on to his land
and he shot them instantly and buried them afterwards himself.

It was not long now to the end of the season, as it was the middle of
March.

But living as he did at this time, Mr. Tebrick grew more and more to be
a true misanthrope. He denied admittance to any that came to visit him,
and rarely showed himself to his fellows, but went out chiefly in the
early mornings before people were about, in the hope of seeing his
beloved fox. Indeed it was only this hope that he would see her again
that kept him alive, for he had become so careless of his own comfort in
every way that he very seldom ate a proper meal, taking no more than a
crust of bread with a morsel of cheese in the whole day, though
sometimes he would drink half a bottle of whiskey to drown his sorrow
and to get off to sleep, for sleep fled from him, and no sooner did he
begin dozing but he awoke with a start thinking he had heard something.
He let his beard grow too, and though he had always been very particular
in his person before, he now was utterly careless of it, gave up
washing himself for a week or two at a stretch, and if there was dirt
under his finger nails let it stop there.

All this disorder fed a malignant pleasure in him. For by now he had
come to hate his fellow men and was embittered against all human
decencies and decorum. For strange to tell he never once in these months
regretted his dear wife whom he had so much loved. No, all that he
grieved for now was his departed vixen. He was haunted all this time not
by the memory of a sweet and gentle woman, but by the recollection of an
animal; a be