influence her father got savage and she felt hurt. Well, she must try to
be patient and tactful. While she meditated, Mrs. Osborn got up, and they
went back to the house.




CHAPTER II

THE OTTER HOUNDS


Grace's tweed dress was wet and rather muddy when she stood with Gerald
on a gravel bank at the head of a pool, where the beck from the tarn
joined a larger stream that flowed through a neighboring dale. There had
been some rain and the water was stained a warm claret-color by the peat.
Bright sunshine pierced the tossing alder branches, and the rapid close
by sparkled between belts of moving shade. Large white dogs with black
and yellow spots swam uncertainly about the pool and searched the bank; a
group of men stood in the rapid, while another group watched the tail of
the pool. Somewhere between them a hard-pressed otter hid.

A few of the men wore red coats and belonged to the hunt; the rest were
shepherds and farmers whom custom entitled to join in the sport. All
carried long iron-pointed poles and waited with keen expectation the
reappearance of the otter. Grace was perhaps the only one to feel a touch
of pity for the exhausted animal and she wondered whether this was not a
sentimental weakness. There was not much to be said for the otter's right
to live; it was stealthy, cruel, and horribly destructive, killing many
more fish and moorhens than it could eat. Indeed, before she went to