There were various
exclamations. A kennel man declared, "She knows what she's about, and
the fox will swing into Sibley's Cover." Someone else more sceptically
asserted that the hound was a fool. Her sustained cry floated back from
under the hill; and, in another minute, the pack, the hunt, was off.
The horses rose gracefully in a sleek brown tide over the first fence;
and then there was a division--the hounds scattered and bunched and
scattered, some of the riders went to the left after the palpable
course of the fox, others pounded direct for Sibley's Cover, and the
remainder reined up over the hounds.
Although long association and familiarity had made such scenes a piece
with Lee Randon's subconsciousness, today the hunt seemed nothing more
than nonsense. He laughed, and made a remark of disparaging humor; but
he found no support. Willing Spencer, kept out of the field by a broken
collar bone, gazed at him with lifted eyebrows. Fanny and Lee turned to
their horses, held for them by a groom at a mounting block, and went
home. The rain had increased, but, not cold, Lee found it pleasant on
his face. They jogged quietly over the roads bordered with gaunt sombre
hedges, through the open countryside, into Eastlake.
Nothing, he realized, had been accomplished with Peyton Morris; the
other was too numbed, shocked, by the incredible accident that had
overtaken him to listen to reason.
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