Page:Tarka the Otter.djvu/252

Granfer Goad’s Garden out of the pool, turned back again, saw their heads in the water from bank to bank, became scared, and left the river.

Galloping across the meadow faster than he had ever run in his life, with the hunting cries behind him and the thudding hooves of bullocks cantering away from hounds on his left, Tarquol came to sheds where farm machines were stored, and going through a yard, he ran through a gap in a hedge into a garden, where an old man was picking oft the tops of his broad beans in a row, muttering about the black-fly on them. Tarquol passed him so near and so swiftly that the granfer’s short clay pipe dropped from between his gums. He muttered in the sunshine and pondered nearly a minute. Hardly had he stooped to pick up his pipe when a great black and white hound crashed through the hedge and ran over his tetties and sun-dried shallots, followed by three more hounds, and after them a couple, and then his garden was filled with them.

Git’oom!

The hounds were gone, leaving him staring at his broken beans.

Tarquol had run round the walls of the cottage and into a farmyard, scattering fowls in terror before him. One of the hens, who was broody, ran at him and leapt at his back, pecking and flapping. Tarquol kicked a little dust behind his straight rudder. At full speed he ran into a pigsty, where a sow was lying on her side with a farrow of eleven tugging at her. Seeing him, they stopped tugging, stared together, squeaked together, and sccimpered away into comers. The