"No," replied Carroll, glancing humorously at his pole. "I don't know what I brought this thing for, unless it was because Mopsy sent me for it. I'd sooner stay and watch with you. Splashing through a river after a little beast which I don't suppose they'd let an outsider kill doesn't interest me, and I don't see why I should want to kill it, anyway. Some of you English people have sporting ideas I can't understand. I struck a young man the other day--a well-educated man by the look of him--who was spending the afternoon happily with a ferret by a corn stack, killing rats with a club. He seemed uncommonly pleased with himself because he'd got four of them." "Oh!" exclaimed Mabel, "you're as bad as the silly people who call killing things cruelty. I wouldn't have thought it of you." "I've seen him," said Vane, "drop a deer going almost as fast as a locomotive through thick brush, with a single-shot rifle, and I believe he once assisted in killing a panther in a thicket you couldn't see two yards ahead in. The point is, that he meant to eat the deer, and the panther had been taking a rancher's hogs." "Then I'm sorry I brought him," said Mabel decidedly. "He's not a sportsman." "I really think there's some excuse for the more vigorous sports," Evelyn declared. "Of course, you can't eliminate a certain amount of cruelty; but admitting that, isn't it just as well that men who live in a luxurious civilisation should be willing to plod through miles of heather after grouse, risk their limbs on horseback, or spend hours in cold water? These are bracing things; they imply moral discipline. It can't be nice to ride at a dangerous fence, or flounder down a rapid after an otter when you're stiff with cold. The effort to do so must be wholesome." "A sure thing," Carroll agreed. "The only drawback is that when you've got your fox or otter, it isn't worth anything. A good many of the folks in the newer lands have to make something of the kind of effort you described every day. In their case, the results are waggon-trails, valleys cleared for orchards, new branch railroads. I suppose it's a matter of opinion, but if I'd put in a season's risky work I'd sooner have a piece of land to grow fruit on, or a share in a mineral claim--you get plenty of excitement in prospecting--than a fox's tail. But there are people in Canada who wouldn't agree with me." He strolled along the water's edge with Evelyn, and presently looked round. "Mopsy's gone, and I don't see Vane," he said. "After all, he's one of us. If you're born in the North Country, it's hard to keep out of the river when you hear the otter hounds." They took up their station behind a growth of alders, and for a while the dogs went trotting by in twos and threes or swam about the pool, but nothing else broke the surface of the leaden-coloured water. Then there was a cry, an outbreak of shouting, a confused baying, and half a dozen hounds dashed past. Evelyn stretched out her hand.