The Complete Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

are meeting near here this morning, sir. The Captain wondered if you'd care to go hunting."
      "No, no! I have to leave immediately after breakfast."
      "The Captain said he could mount you, sir, and lend you clothes."
      "No, no! Quite impossible."
      But when he came down to breakfast and found his host filling a saddle flask with cherry-brandy, secret threads began to pull at Tom's heart.
      "Of course we're a comic sort of pack. Everyone turns out, parson, farmers, all kinds of animals. But we generally get a decent run along the edge of the moor. Pity you can't come out. I'd like you to try my new mare, she's a lovely ride ... a bit fine for this type of country, perhaps ..."
      Well, why not? ... after all, he and Angela knew each other so well ... it was not as though ...
      And two hours later Tom found himself in a high wind galloping madly across the worst hunting country in the British Isles—alternations of heather and bog, broken by pot-holes, boulders, mountain streams and disused gravel pits—hounds streaming up the valley opposite, the mare going perfectly, farmers' boys on shaggy little ponies, solicitors' wives on cobs, retired old sea-captains bouncing about eighteen hands high, vets and vicars plunging on all sides of him, and not a care in his heart.
      Two hours later still he was in less happy circumstances, seated alone in the heather, surrounded on all sides by an unbroken horizon of empty moor. He had dismounted to tighten a girth, and galloping across a hillside to catch up with the field, his mount had put her foot in a rabbit hole, tumbled over, rolled perilously near him, and then regaining her feet, had made off at a brisk canter towards her stable, leaving him on his back, panting for breath. Now he was quite alone in a totally strange country. He did not know the name of his host or of his host's house. He pictured himself tramping from village to village saying: "Can you tell me the address of a young man who was hunting this morning? He was in Butcher's house at Eton!" Moreover, Tom suddenly remembered he was married. Of course he and Angela knew each other so well ... but there were limits.
      At eight o'clock that evening a weary figure trudged into the gas-lit parlour of the Royal George Hotel, Chagford. He wore sodden riding boots and torn and muddy clothes. He had wandered for five hours over the moor, and was hungry. They provided him with Canadian cheese, margarine, tinned salmon, and bottled stout, and sent him to sleep in a large brass bedstead which creaked as he moved. But he slept until half past ten next morning.
      The third day of the honeymoon started more propitiously. A bleak sun was shining a little. Stiff and sore in every muscle, Tom dressed in the still damp riding clothes of his unknown host and made inquiries about reaching the remote village where his Aunt Martha's house stood, and where Angela must be anxiously awaiting him. He wired to her: "Arriving this evening. Will explain. All love," and then inquired about trains. There was one train in the day which left early in the afternoon and, after three changes, brought him to a neighbouring station late that evening. Here he suffered another check. There was no car to be hired in the village. His aunt's house was eight miles away. The telephone did not function after seven o'clock. The day's journey in damp clothes had set him shivering and sneezing. He was clearly in for a bad cold. The prospect of eight miles' walk in the dark was unthinkable. He spent the night at the inn.
      The fourth day dawned to find Tom speechless and nearly deaf. In this condition the car came to conduct him to the house so kindly lent for his week's honeymoon. Here he was greeted with the news that Angela had left early that morning.
      "Mrs. Watch received a telegram, sir, saying that you had met with an accident hunting. She was very put out as she had asked several friends to luncheon."
      "But where has she