THE LOVE-CHILD. 657 



irons at the fire, and, God help me ! I shall try to flatten your faces !" 

 The gallant hunt retired discomfited and disgraced ; but the poor 

 hare, notwithstanding all that we could do for it, died the next day, 

 as my grandmother said, " of a bursten heart/' from her efforts in the 

 chase. During the night she squealed like a child in agony her 

 dying look was dreadfully human. I shall never forget it. 



Could I but get beneath or behind my grandmother's stiff, thick, 

 patched petticoat, I should have dared to pebble the noses of Sin 

 and Death with a consciousness of perfect impunity ; could I have 

 reached Farmer Belroy's kitchen, I felt sure that I should have no- 

 thing to fear from any thing appertaining to Squire Patch ; but in 

 the open fields I should incur the risk of being viewed, and run down. 

 I therefore determined on steering for another haven, namely, the 

 cottage of Ezra, the gamekeeper who had shot me in the leg. It was 

 much nearer than Farmer Belroy's or my grandmother's, and it could 

 be come at, entirely, with the exception of one meadow and a garden, 

 through thick cover. It lay, however, in quite a different direction, 

 and to reach it I was compelled to retrace my flounderings up the 

 bed of the brook. As I passed silently and unseen the spot where I 

 had made my plunge, the bloodhounds, Sin and her half-bred daugh- 

 ter Death, whose sire was a bulldog, were baying above me, and I 

 heard Squire Patch shrieking for the Caddiscombe otter hounds. 

 Quietly making my way up the stream, I at length reached the root 

 of a tall and noble maiden oak, which rose from one of its banks, and 

 after having overtopped the underwood, among which it was born, 

 soared bravely up into broad daylight far above the ridge of the little 

 ravine. This friendly tree I climbed with ease, and travelling to the 

 extremity of one of its upper branches, alighted safely on the level of 

 the wood. 



Fear, as the novelists of Leadenhall-street observe, lent me wings, 

 and I flew through the copse. In five minutes I had reached the 

 back door of Ezra's cottage. I opened it, shut it quietly behind me, 

 shot the lower bolt, the only one I could reach, and, being bare- 

 footed, came into the kitchen without being heard. Kitty was 

 clasped in the arms, and weeping on the shoulder, of her brother, 

 Blue Peter, the poacher. The interview was clandestine; I revealed 

 myself by coughing, and they looked like guilty things. Kitty, not- 

 withstanding my filth, clutched me up to her bosom, and kissed me. 

 Blue Peter laughed. I frankly told them my story ; and within a 

 few moments from its conclusion, I was stripped, plunged into a 

 large tub of soap-suds it was Kitty's washing day and after 

 having been properly towelled, put to bed. I was still in a state of 

 horrible alarm ; but Blue Peter vanquished my bitter apprehensions 

 of the bloodhounds, by assuring me that no canine nose in the world 

 could follow me up a maiden oak. Kitty brought me a podger of 

 hot milk enriched with lots of sugar, and a dash of smuggled brandy,, 

 and in half an hour after I had entered the cottage, I was sleeping, at 

 mid-day, in a fine feather-bed fast as a top. 



My repose was, however, doomed to be brief as that hurried but 

 less comfortable slumber which befel me on the bank of the brook. 

 I had a violent and vivid dream, in which, as I subsequently found, 



M. M. No. 90. 4 G 



