and riding with so grim a mouth and such a bloodthirsty expression that
she might have had a blood-feud with all foxes. Perhaps, when she rode
down the anxious red-brown streak, she thought she was riding down a
cruel fate that had somehow left her life vacant of joy; perhaps, when
the little creature was torn piece-meal, she imagined herself tearing
so the frail unconquerable powers of love and beauty. Anyway, she never
missed a meet, and she and her sister never ceased their long silent
battle for Reddin, who remained as unconscious of them as if they
were his aunts. He was, of course, beneath them, very much beneath
them--hardly more than a farmer, but still--a man.

Reddin went on his dubious and discreditable way, and the woman Sally
Haggard, of the cottage in the hollow, gained by virtue of a certain
harsh beauty what the ladies Clomber would have given all their wealth
for.

The other inhabitant of Undern, Andrew, revolved in his own orbit, and
was entirely unknown to his master. He cut the yews--the peacocks and
the clipped round trees and the ones like tables--twice a year. He was
creating a swan. He had spent twenty years on it, and hoped to complete
it in a few more, when the twigs that were to be the beak had grown
sufficiently. It never occurred to him that the place was not his, that
he might have to leave it. He had his spring work and his autumn work;
in the winter he ordained various small indoor jobs for himself; and in
the summer, in common with the rest of the place, he grew somnolent. He
sat by the hacked and stained kitchen-table (which he seldom scrubbed,
and on which he tried his knife, sawed bones, and chopped meat) and
slept the afternoons away in the ceaseless drone of flies.

When Reddin called him he rarely answered, and only deigned to go to