The new pack, the foot dogs, had run into their fox handsomely in the open.
"Yoi-i, there! Who-whoop!" Barty was dexterously removing brush marks and pads before he held the carcass above his head in the midst of the slightly interested hounds, Grandjer alone showing what he thought of the matter by snapping at Barty's legs and growling savagely.
"Well done! Bravo! Just what's wanted! How they must have bustled him!"
"Yoi-i, there! Worry! worry! worry! You would never make dacent fox-hounds of thim," said Barty disgustedly, "so what the odds!"
"Me Dada schnaps the hares if he is up quick enough," said Andy thoughtfully; "an' whin he is not, there is no one to be nisin', so they are not acclimatized to what ye are bawlin' out."
"The finest thing that could happen. We may congratulate ourselves," gasped Freyne. "Tally ho! Tear him and eat him! Tally ho!"
"Hi, puss, puss! Hurreh! Hurreh!" chorused the arriving foot contingent. "Yerra ate him! Hi, puss!"
"There is one fox pasht in half an hour back," added the covert keeper. "Had ye two in front of ye, sir? Ar'n't they wondthers for what they look like, thim dogs!"
"Dearest George, I took your advice and came across high ground," remarked Mrs. Freyne, ambling up. "We all saw you riding away from the Croompaun. I should have been afraid you had fallen in, but I saw your hunting cap going round so plainly and so sensibly."
George Freyne said nothing rather expressively. It was a little hard on a man who had just been telling his cousin Annette the dangers which she had escaped in the bog, and how hounds had flown down there.
"And, by the way, Annette, I thank you to buy tuppenceworth of red ribbon for that mare's tail," put in Darby. "Home Ruler is quite lame where you kicked her. She was last all the way."
"She is always lasht afther she is first for ten minutes," murmured Andy. "Me Dada says it is the weight of him, and that some of his fambly was mastiffs an' them yally saintly dogs."
The next covert was three miles off, and hounds, now learning something of their new work, pattered in fair order along a stony road. There was a faint diversion occasioned by Grandjer almost chopping a cat, one which Andy explained he was near to get offin befour, she having dragged her claws down his face onst an' got away from him.