236 STRAY-AWAYS 



poignant by demands and inquiries from all and 

 sundry of those over whom she has been set in 

 authority (a meaningless phrase, that should be 

 directly reversed where the ruler of an Irish comitry 

 estabhshment is concerned). 



Motors, it is needless to say, do not at this period 

 exist ; and the meet is nine miles away. The Deputy 

 Master meets the homids and the elderly whipper-in 

 at her own gate. Her mare is fresh, the road is 

 slippery, the hounds are demonstrative in their affec- 

 tion. For a moment she confidently expects to find 

 herself and the mare on their backs in the gutter. 

 " Wilful," the spoilt puppy whom she herself had 

 walked, ha^^ng first, to the fury of the mare, clawed, 

 with tom-cat-like mollrowings of affection, that lady's 

 shining shoulder, then proceeds to get under her feet, 

 to the acute peril of all concerned. A bitter north- 

 west wind, snow-laden and fierce, fights every inch of 

 advance along the road to the meet. Our Master's 

 hands go dead ; the hounds' jog, at which she must 

 perforce travel, does not conduce to raising the tem- 

 perature, and the mare's exuberance of spirits, which 

 becomes more pronounced where the frost under the 

 surface slime is most slippery, does not find a response 

 in her rider's breast. 



She arrives early at the meet, a bleak cross-roads 

 near a long wood. The earth-stopper only is there, 

 an old man, versed in guile, steeped in lies. 



" Ere midnight I shut every hole o' them, my 

 lady," he says. " Oh ! divil a beetle could get in 

 or out o' them I " And again : '* Oh ! full o' foxes 

 it is ! Didn't one whip seven laying pullets from 

 me vrife a' Sunday niglit ? " 



The Master ignores the conundrum; she sees, 

 scudding towards her across the fields, two women, 

 and knows too well their mission. (Have I said that 

 she is also manager of the Fowl Fund ? She is) — 



