“That is just like Jeremy,” she sighed. “He is always going out shooting instead of attending to things.” “Can he hit birds flying, then?” asked Ernest. “Hit them!” she answered, with a touch of pride; “I don’t think he ever misses them. I wish he could do other things as well.” Jeremy at once went up at least fifty per cent. in Ernest’s estimation. On their way back to the house they peeped in through the office window, and Ernest saw “hard-riding Atterleigh” at his work, copying deeds. “He’s your grandfather, isn’t he?” “Yes.” “Does he know you?” “In a sort of a way; but he is quite mad. He thinks that Reginald is the devil, whom he must serve for a certain number of years. He has got a stick with numbers of notches on it, and he cuts out a notch every month. It is all very sad. I think it is a very sad world;” and she sighed again. “Why does he wear hunting-clothes?” asked Ernest. “Because he always used to ride a good deal. He loves a horse now. Sometimes you will see him get up from his writing-table, and the tears come into his eyes if anybody comes into the yard on horseback. Once he came out and tried to get on to a horse and ride off, but they stopped him.” “Why don’t they let him ride?” “O, he would soon kill himself. Old Jack Tares, who lives at Kesterwick, and gets his living by rats and ferrets, used to be whip to grandfather’s hounds when he had them, and says that he always was a little mad about riding. One moonlight night he and grandfather went out to hunt a stag that had strayed here out of some park. They put the stag out of a little grove at a place called Claffton, five miles away, and he took them round by Starton and Ashleigh, and then came down the flats to the sea, about a mile and a half below here, just this side of the quicksand. The moon was so bright that it was almost like day, and for the last mile the stag was in view not more than a hundred yards in front of the hounds, and the pace was racing. When he came to the beach he went right through the waves out to the sea, and the hounds after him, and grandfather after them. They caught him a hundred yards out and killed him, and then grandfather turned his horse’s head and swam back with the hounds.” “My eye!” was Ernest’s comment on this story. “And what did Jack Tares do?” “O, he stopped on the beach and said his prayers; he thought that they would all be drowned.”