When four or five hooks
are occupied, the lady walks homeward with the demure dog, Darby goes
and drinks at The Chequers till about eleven, and then the
mouse-coloured deerhound is taken out to do her share.
The fond couple were sitting on a bench under a tree, for Joan had
fairly tired under the weight of no less than nine rabbits which were
slung on her belt. The lurcher stole up, and quietly laid a rabbit down
at Joan's feet; then a soft-spoken man came from behind the tree, and
observed--
"I am a policeman in plain clothes, and you must go with me to the
keeper's cottage."
But Darby, the wily one, rose to the occasion. The dog is trained to
repudiate his acquaintance at a word, and when he said, "That's not my
dog; get off, you brute!" the accomplished lurcher picked up the rabbit
and vanished like lightning. Nevertheless the policeman led off Darby,
and Joan followed. The keeper was out, but the policeman searched the
Consumptive and found nothing.
The keeper said to me--even me, "My wife tells me they brought up a man
the other night, but he had no game on him.
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