SEEKING A CLUE II7 



watchdog's chain and his warning bark ; the dial must be pointing to one, 

 and my Knight of the Velvet Cap must have left the castle. Beyond the 

 house, what a landscape offered itself! The floods were out, and no ford 

 between Passingford Mill and the neighbouring village of Abridge would 

 be of any avail should hounds cross Roden's yellow flood. The clouds 

 were now gradually dispersing, though a dull grey mist seemed to be creep- 

 ing up in their wake, and the rain-soaked overcoat was making itself felt, 

 as we knocked at the closed door of the blacksmith's forge at Passingford 

 Bridge and left it in his charge. 



No signs of the chase at present ; the busy hay-binder at the stack near 

 the Osiers opining they would be too wet to hold a fox, and the Green in scarce 

 better plight. No hurry, if we can reach the covert before hounds have left it. 

 Keeping well on the right, up the track used by the cottagers to their homes 

 (for there are several cottages in this wild spot, equally methinks free 

 from the jurisdiction of the school-board officer and sanitary inspector), we 

 accosted one of the natives, a civil-spoken fellow, who told of a fox lately 

 seen, and the line he usually took (this in reserve for future use), and knew 

 that hounds were expected that day. We plunged up to the girths as we 

 rode on through a stream that divides the two coverts, and so up the muddy 

 lane towards Pyrgo Wood, where, as we gained its outskirts, we saw a 

 vision. Did it bring delight ? Did it give encouragement ? It should have 

 done, but did not, for the covert-coated fair equestrian was trotting rapidly 

 in the Navestock direction, the last in which we should have looked for sign 

 of hounds. Following in her tracks for a few hundred yards — she was 

 going much too rapidly to be overtaken — I could see nothing, but encoun- 

 tered first a man, from his speech an undoubted Irishman, from his nose, 

 an explorer of fences, for it was cut in a manner that would have aroused 

 the envy of half our thrusters at the end of a quick thing in the Roothings. 

 He was anxious to impart information, and equally ready for a guerdon for 

 what little he had to dispose of, though it was not worth a kopeck. Lower 

 down, roadmen three, civil and anxious to put me right, but no clue beyond 

 the lady and two or three horsemen who had been inquiring for hounds in 

 that direction, and no sight of them near the coverts on the hill usually 

 drawn at a Dagenham meet. Back at a trot towards the big wood, for it 

 was turning chilly, after the slow ride up the sloppy lanes from the green — 

 to turn in at the farmyard near it and accost the man cutting mangolds, 

 and to be misled against my better judgment. " Oh, yes," he said, " hounds 

 have done this wood ; they have gone clean away ; they were running hard 

 below Havering before dinner." 



It now being near two, with scant prospect of falling in with hounds, I 

 turned homewards, intending to take the green on my way. Luckily, seeing a 

 man at work improving a grass field, I rode up and accosted him, eliciting the 

 following reply : " Well, if they 'ave been in that 'ere wood, they muss 'ave 

 been uncommon still, for I 'aven' 'eard 'em." So now to return to my man 

 with the mangold knife, and at the same instant to catch sight of a cloud of 

 horsemen approaching Pyrgo Wood, and to reach the corner the moment 

 the hounds were thrown in. The wind swept keenly round the covert. 

 There were, however, but few seconds to wait, for a ringing halloa on the 

 far side sent a joyous thrill through every nerve and fibre in my body. (I 

 was on the right horse.) Down the woodside came a few horsemen, gal- 

 loping towards us. They had mistaken the halloa, and the bay shied well 

 into the field as he met them. Mr. Tyndale White, jun., was one, and 

 when I saw him again he was so plastered with mud as to be hardly recog- 

 nisable. The majority of his companions, however, who had taken their 

 stand at the far corner of the grass field had turned back into the plough. 



