During this speech, Kennedy keeping wary eyes about him, was guarding the Colonel off with the utmost skill, and contriving that he should neither get sufficiently in advance or behind to have a chance of discovering again the burden he carried. However, the sergeant betrayed himself by a momentary impulse of vanity: he looked round in Colonel Sutherland's face to read the success of his last compliment, and in that moment of incaution the Colonel slid a step in advance, and, thrusting his stick to Kennedy's other side, caught by the feet a hare. The sergeant made the best of it, finding himself caught. He fixed his eyes on the Colonel's face after the first start of discovery with a comical half-defiance, half-deprecation, which, however, the light was too dim to show. "You old sinner!--you romancing old humbug!--what do you call that thing there, eh? That's what takes you behind the hedge in the gloaming, with your wisdom and your experience! What do you call that thing there?" "Call it, Cornel?--sure and it's a bit of a leveret, sir," said the sergeant, twisting it up by the legs with pretended carelessness. "I picked the poor baste up, that was laid, with its leg broke, upon the grass." "And so that's how you take your walks and show your love for the dumb creatures, you old leasing-maker!" cried the Colonel. "Throw it down this moment, sir--carry it back to where you got it, or I'll make an information against you the moment we get to Tillington--I will, by George!" "Oh, ay, Cornel, at your pleasure," cried the sergeant; "I'm not the man to withstand my commanding officer when he takes to swearing. I'll put it down, lookye, sir, where we stand; or I'll take it back beyant the hedge, and the first labouring chap as comes by, he'll get the baste, and link it hoam in his clumsy hand, Cornel, and be spied upon and given up, and a snare proved to him, and clapped in jail. He'll goo in innocent, Cornel, and he'll come out wroth and ruined, and all because my own officer seed an ould sodger pick up a bit of meat that was useless to any mortal beyant a hedge, and informed on me. And it shall never be said that William Kennedy transgressed discipline. There it is, sir--I'm blythe to be quat of it; pitch it from ye furder than I can see." The Colonel poised the hare on his stick for a moment, shaking his head, then laughed aloud, and tossed it at Kennedy's feet. "There's reason in what you say, you poaching old sinner; keep your spoil," he said, "but march on, sergeant, and keep out of my sight till we can take different roads. I don't keep company with stolen game. There, there, that's enough. I've heard your best excuses already. Good night, my man; and I advise you, for the sake of the old Hundred, to have nothing to do after this either with hares or snares." CHAPTER XVII.