"I don't care where we go."
"I thought perhaps the Colley Wood beat, my lord--"
"Yes, capital. That'll do. I leave it to you. Sorry I can't stay to talk
it over. Good-night!"
"There's a pair of foxes, my lord, in the Nowers spinney that have been
doing a shocking amount of damage lately...."
But the door of the library was already shut. Thurston went away, both
astonished and aggrieved. There were few things he liked better than a
chat with the young fellow whom he had taught to hold a gun; and Tatham
was generally the most accessible of masters and the keenest of
sportsmen, going into every detail of the shooting parties himself, with
an unfailing spirit.
Meanwhile Victoria was speeding eastward in her motor along the Pengarth
road. Darkness was fast rushing on. To her left she saw the spreading
waste of Flitterdale Common, its great stretches of moss livid in the
dusk: and beyond it, westward, the rounded tops and slopes of the range
that runs from Great Dodd to Helvellyn. Presently she made out, in the
distance, looking southward from the high-level road on which the car was
running, the great enclosure of Threlfall Park, on either side of the
river which ran between her and Flitterdale; the dim line of its circling
wall; its scattered woods; and farther on, the square mass of the Tower
itself, black above the trees.
The car stopped at a gate, a dark and empty lodge beside it. The footman
jumped down. Was the gate locked?--and must she go round to Whitebeck,
and make her attack from that side? No, the gate swung open, and in sped
the car.
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