For two minutes the maid sat silent, hardly daring to look at the river. The dragonfly flew over the pool, seizing flies and tearing them apart in its horny jaws. Her father watched it as it settled on the snag, rose up, circled, and lit on the water, it seemed. Tarka sneezed again, and the dragonfly flew away. A grunt of satisfaction from the old man, a brown hand and wrist holding aloft a hat, a slow intaken breath, and,
Tally Ho!
Tarka dived when the hounds came down, and the chain showed where he had swum. Many saw his dark sleek form as he walked by the edge of a grassy islet by the twelve trees. The hounds ran to him, and Tarka turned and faced them, squatting on his short hindlegs, his paws close against his round and sturdy chest. He bit Render in the nose, making his teeth meet. In an instant he drew back, tissing, and bit Deadlock in the flews. The narrow lower jaw snapped again and again, until the press of hounds hid him from sight.
He squirmed away through legs and under bellies, biting and writhing a way to the water; and the chain drew out on the surface of the pool while hounds were still seeking him on the stones where he had sat and faced them.
Leu-on, then! Leu-on! Ov-ov-ov-ov-over!
Tarka’s pace was slow, and his dives were short. In the water by the Peal Rock he lay, glancing at the faces along the banks, across the river, and in the river. His small dark eyes showed no feeling. He turned away from the human faces, to watch the coming of hounds. He was calm and fearless and fatigued. When
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