"Oliver Leach came this way,"--he mused--"He passed me almost immediately after she did. Is this his work, I wonder?" Here he drew out his always greasy pocket-handkerchief and wiped his face with as much tender care as though it were a handsome one--"I shouldn't be surprised,"--he continued, in a mild sotto-voce--"I shouldn't be at all surprised if he had arranged this little business! Clever--very! Fatal accidents in the hunting-field are quite common. He knows that. So do I. But I shall find out,--yes!--I shall find out---"
Here he almost jumped with an access of 'nerves'--for 'Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt' suddenly stretched out her long arched neck and whinnied with piteous, beseeching loudness. A pause of intense stillness followed the mare's weird cry,--a stillness broken only by the slow pattering of rain. Then from the near distance came the baying of hounds and a far echo of the hunting horn.
Seized by panic, the Reverend 'Putty' scrambled quickly out of the ploughed field, through the broken hedge and on to the high-road again, where taking himself to his bicycle again, he scurried away like a rat from falling timber. He had been on his way to Riversford when he had stopped to look at the little fallen heap of violet and gold,--guarded so faithfully by a four-footed beast twenty times more 'Christian' in natural feeling than his 'ordained' clerical self,--and he now resumed that journey. And though, as he neared the town, he met many persons of the neighbourhood on foot, in carts, and light-wheeled traps, he never once paused to give news of the accident, or so much as thought of sending means of assistance.
"I am not supposed to have seen anything,"--he said, with a fat smile--"and I am not supposed to know! I shall certainly not be asked to assist at the funeral service. Walden will attend to that!"
He cycled on rapidly, and arriving at Riversford went to tea with the brewer's wife, Mrs. Mordaunt Appleby, at Appleby Hall, and was quite fatherly and benevolent to her son, a lumpy child of ten, the future heir to all the malt, hops, barrels, vats, and poisonous chemicals comprising the Appleby estates in this world.
The afternoon closed in coldly and mournfully. A steady weeping drizzle of rain set in. Some of the hunters returned through St. Rest by twos and threes, looking in a woeful condition, bespattered up to their saddles with mud, and feeling, no doubt, more or less out of temper, as notwithstanding a troublesome and fatiguing run, the fox had escaped them after all. It was about five o'clock, when Walden, having passed a quiet day among his books, and having felt the sense of a greater peace and happiness at his heart than he had been conscious of since the May-day morning of the year, pushed aside his papers, rose from his chair, and, looking out at the dreary weather, wondered if the 'Guinevere' of the hunt had got safely home from her gallop across country.