Now here was Jardine, the hound-man from the Hall, who had only one hand and made shift for another with an iron hook. He had shot off his own hand when he was a lad, but he had gone on using a gun as well as before. There were hounds waiting behind him as he paused in the road, low hounds with bowed legs and fine heads, drooping ears and asking, human eyes. Long ago Jardine had got blood-poisoning feeding the pack, but Kit had quite forgotten that he was dead. There could be no real death on the night of his coming home—certainly not such a dreadful death as that. Besides, it was easy to see the man was there alive, gaitered and grey-whiskered and thin-faced and light-eyed. And of course there were the asking dogs at his heel; the dogs were witness enough that he was alive. Yet old Forward was dead, and Rosebud, and King’s Own.... They had been dead for years, and if they hunted still it was only at nights.... There were other dogs, too, with Jardine and the pack; a pointer, for instance, somewhere in the crowd. Kit was quite pleased to see the brown and white sporting dog which nobody fancied now. Suddenly, with a thrill, he noticed a sheep-dog of his own, with a snowy patch like a star on its black chest. It did not seem to know he was in the trap, and none of the dogs paid any attention to the horse. There was a bobtail, too, full of happy smiles, and a slim little toy that had saved the Hall in a fire. Jardine had a gun on his left shoulder and a couple of rabbits hanging from his hook, and it did not seem strange in the least that he should have gone out shooting with that doggy train. He slung the rabbits into the trap by way of a welcome to old Kit, and the fiddler thanked him and nodded as he drove away. It pleased him that he should have something of the sort to carry home, and though he could not see the rabbits at his feet, he felt the weight of their bodies on his boots.