A fresh shadow drifted almost imperceptibly across Wiggie’s tired face. Dandy looked up quickly, but, as once before, he smiled her into holding her peace, and with a sharp fling of the dice she scrambled Pincushion down the mountain and over a wall of matches. He took heart of grace after that, and began to forge rapidly ahead, passing Helwise’s pug-nosed St. Bernard and Wiggie’s black and tan with the Pomeranian tail. Harriet’s hound was leading easily. Her fierce throws seemed to frighten the dice into showing their most lucrative faces. The fox--as represented by an ancient pen-wiper lately chewed by mice--was in imminent danger. Pincushion gained, however, straining clumsily after Cragsman’s delicate grace. The others withdrew, leaving them to fight it out, and then a curious thing happened. The moment Pincushion’s head drew level with Cragsman’s lean flank, Harriet began to throw blanks. Cragsman stayed stubbornly glued to the same spot, while Dandy’s monstrosity, in a succession of twos, finished the course and claimed the quarry. Harriet reached for her gloves and announced that she must be going. Dandy stood up, too, still looking at the game. “That was queer, wasn’t it?” she asked. “The finish, I mean? Cragsman stopped playing!” “The luck changed,” Lancaster said briefly. “All the same, they say in the fells that if a mongrel joins in the chase the pure-bred hound drops the fox instantly. No wonder Cragsman took steck at that overfed pincushion of yours!” “I know a song about that,” Wiggie put in. “Yes, I _shall_ say it if I like!” He began to quote softly-- “There was a Love went after a Heart, Haughty and fine and fleet, Till it chanced a little Cur-Love took part, That hadn’t been at the meet. And the Proud Love bowed in a cold despite, And out of the running stept; And said--‘It’s very bad form to fight. J’accepte!’ But the little Cur-Love made shift to pass, For it cared too much for pride, And, stealing fearfully through the grass, Came out on the other side; And said, as it took the Heart to keep And hold and cherish and cleave,-- ‘I’m glad I wasn’t too proud to creep. J’arrive!’” Harriet glared at him, dragging on her hard gloves in ruthless snatches, but as he finished he lifted his eyes to hers with a smile so full of warm goodwill that her own dropped. Wiggie knew what the ugly room meant to her, and the ridiculous game and the taciturn man, where nobody else had even so much as guessed. But then Wiggie was a magician, so Dandy had said, and magicians don’t count. Dusk was dropping as they came out of the house, and along the quiet fields had risen the heart-high, ghostly barriers of the mist. A far-off touch of frost was in the air, and the clean smell of a bonfire soared with its faint, pale smoke beyond a distant wall. “I’ll walk over to Watters with you, if I may,” Lancaster said, groping in the hall for his cap. “I’ve papers for Mr. Shaw.”