The Buccaneer Farmer | Page 6

watchers' legs, dived
under swimming dogs, made bold dashes along the bank, and hidden in
belts of reeds. Its capture had often looked certain and yet it had
escaped. At first Grace had noticed the animal's confidence, beauty of
form, and strength; but it had gradually got slack, hesitating, and limp.
Now, when it lurked, half-drowned, in the depths of the pool while its
pitiless enemies waited for it to come up to breathe, she began to wish
it would get away.
Thorn, the master of the hounds, was talking to his huntsman not far off.
He was a friend of Osborn's, and Grace had once thought him a dashing
and accomplished man of the world, but had recently, for no obvious
reason, felt antagonistic. Alan was not as clever as she had imagined;
he was smart, sometimes cheaply smart, which was another thing. Then
he was beginning to get fat, and she vaguely shrank from the way he
now and then looked at her. On the whole, it was a relief to note that he
was occupied.
For a few moments Grace let her eyes wander up the dale to the crags
where the force leaped down from the red moor at Malton Head. Belts
of dry bent-grass shone like gold and mossy patches glimmered
luminously green. The fall looked like white lace drawn across the
stones. A streak of mist touched the lofty crag, and above it a soft white
cloud trailed across the sky. Then she turned as her brother spoke.
"Alan has given us a good hunt and means to make a kill. He's rather a
selfish beast and a bit too sure of himself; but he runs the pack well and

knows how to get the best out of life. No Woolwich and sweating as a
snubbed subaltern for him! He stopped at home, saw his tenants farmed
well, and shot his game. That's my notion of a country gentleman!"
"Father can look after Tarnside and a duty goes with owning land,"
Grace remarked. "A landlord who need not work ought to serve the
State. That idea was perhaps the best thing in the feudal system and it's
not altogether forgotten yet. Father was right when he decided to make
you a soldier."
"He can send me to Woolwich, but after all that's as far as he can go.
You're not at your best when you're improving," Gerald rejoined; and
added with a grin, "You don't like old Alan, do you? I thought you
snubbed him half an hour since."
Grace colored, but did not answer. She had hurt her foot by falling from
a mossy boulder and Thorn had come to help as she floundered across a
shallow pool. She was draggled and her hair was loose, and Thorn's
faint amusement annoyed her. Somehow it hinted at familiarity. She
would not have resented it once, for they had been friends; but when
she came home and he had tried to renew the friendship she had noted a
subtle difference. Alan was forty, but now she had left school the
disparity of their ages was, in a sense, much less marked. Then a shout
roused her and she looked round.
Where the smooth, brown water ran past the alder roots, a very small,
dark object moved in advance of a faint, widening ripple. Grace knew it
was the point of the otter's head; the animal's lungs were empty since it
remained up so long. Next moment plunging dogs churned the pool
into foam, the object vanished, and men ran along the bank to the lower
rapid, while those already there beat the shallow with their poles. The
dogs bunched together and began to swim up stream; Gerald and one or
two more plunged into the water, and for a few moments the otter
showed itself again.
It looked like a fish and not an animal as it broke the surface, rising in
graceful leaps. Then it went down, with the dogs swimming hard close
behind, and Grace thought it must be caught. It was being steadily

driven to the lower end of the stopped rapid, where the water was
scarcely a foot deep. The animal reappeared, plunging in and out
among the shallows but forging up stream, and the men who meant to
turn it back closed up. There was one at every yard across the belt of
sparkling foam. They had spiked poles to beat the water and it seemed
impossible that their victim could get past.
Yet the otter vanished, and for a minute or two there was silence, until
the dogs rushed up the bank. Then somebody shouted, the huntsman
blew his horn, and a small, wedge-shaped ripple trailed, very slowly
across the next pool. The otter had somehow stolen past the watchers'
legs