I conceive that the Master was to the full as amazed as the deer had been, and also, when he understood what had happened, as indignant. He looked after the vanished animal as if totally at a loss to comprehend the cause of its curious conduct--no doubt he had known that deer before--then he brought his head round slowly, scouring the landscape as he did so, till the boy came within his line of vision. Having sighted him, he glared as at some monstrosity, his cheeks purpling, and the blood-vessels becoming more and more distinct. Philipson explained.
"The young beggar threw a brick at him--nice young rascal!"
The Master shook his clenched fist at the boy across the hedge. I never before saw an elderly gentleman in such a passion.
"You somethinged somethinged something, what do you mean by throwing your somethinged somethinged bricks at my blankety blankety deer?" Even the casual reader must have read something about the remarkable language which occasionally exudes from the lips of gentlemen, in moments of excitement, on the hunting-field. The Master flavoured the atmosphere with examples of that sort of language then. "If I get hold of you, I'll twist your somethinged somethinged head off your blankety blankety shoulders!"
If there had been a handy gate, it is probable that the Master would have used it to pursue that boy, and, regardless of consequences, when caught, have given him something for himself. But there was no gate just there. The hedge was well established and closely grown. The Master's horse was not the kind of quadruped to force its way through such an obstacle, or to surmount it by a jump, especially with its owner on its back.
The Master's stentorian tones were the first intimation the boy had received that there had been spectators of his action. When he heard that strident voice, and was saluted by that flow of language, and recognised the Master's "pink," no doubt he realised the full enormity of his offence. As he did so, like the deer, "he stood not on the order of his going, but went at once," rushing pell-mell through the gate by which he had entered, and passing from our sight.
"I'd give five pounds," declared the Master, "for a chance of breaking every bone in the scoundrel's body!"
As I was hoping that he did not mean exactly what he said, Philipson, who kept his eyes open, diverted our interest into a new channel.
"Hallo! There's the hounds!" he cried.
Turning round, as Philipson had done, sure enough, in the field behind us, there were the hounds. At least, there were some of them. Each individual member of the pack was wandering about in a desultory fashion, doing nothing in particular, apparently not a little bored, and wondering what it was that had brought it there.