Waddles sauntered slowly forward, saw the rabbit, and making a spring, knocked it over with one blow of his paw; but still it did not move. Then Tommy saw that it was a stuffed beast mounted on a little wooden platform, to which moss and dead leaves were glued. When he had recovered from his astonishment he was ready to cry with rage. “It was too mean of Mr. Hugh,” he muttered. “He promised--he promised, and then he didn’t do it.” Then the exact words of the promise came to him; it was that he was to “meet a rabbit face to face.” “I s’pose I have,” he continued; “only he didn’t say its insides would be stuffing instead of real.” But when he picked up his gun, which he had dropped, and looked it over, and felt the bag which sagged his pocket, he remembered that he had forgotten to put any shot in the gun. Then he walked along, leaving the poor stuffed rabbit resting on one ear, wondering which was the worst, to have shot at a real rabbit with no shot, or to have been fooled by a stuffed one, and at the moment that he made up his mind that the first would be the most aggravating, he turned into the low meadow that was divided from its neighbour by the old barbed wire fence, and from which the lane led to Robin Hood’s Inn. A yelping of dogs sounded afar off in the rear, with straggling cries on both sides of him and in front. Off started Waddles, quickly disappearing in the bushes, and Tommy followed as fast as his legs could carry him, for he heard a voice and the trampling of hoofs, and if the run was over, it must be luncheon time. All unknown to him the drag-hunt had split in two, deaf Mrs. Happy being the innocent first cause. She had gone to Robin Hood’s Inn with Anne, and had curled up contentedly in the sunny porch in company with old Laddie, when presently an odour reached her nose that caused her to spring up, sniff the air, and start headlong down the lane to the road, where, on crossing the stone fence, she struck the trail of a skunk, startled from his daytime lodging by the hounds who had recently passed close by. Nose to ground, she gave tongue and followed the skunk, who had zigzagged about the fences for a time before making off to another hiding-place he had by the river. Further down, the hounds in doubling crossed this new trail, and some of the young ones, hearing Happy’s cry, were drawn off upon it, part of the riders following, only to come upon impassable rocks by the river cut. * * * * * The barking came nearer, and Happy, Waddles, and Jack dashed past Tommy and up the lane; at the same time he saw a riderless horse in the outer field, and something seemed to move near the barbed wire fence that ran between. “It’s one of those poor hounds, and that wicked wire has caught him,” cried Tommy, running toward the spot with his eyes flashing and his little fists doubled up, for, like Anne, he could not bear to have animals suffer pain.