got too large a share of all the business that is done in the dale."
"It's obvious that you have learned less than you think," Osborn rejoined, feeling that he was on safer ground. "You don't seem to understand that concentration means economy. Bell, for example, buys and stores his goods in large quantities, instead of handling a number of small lots at different times, which would cost him more."
"I can see that," Grace admitted, "But I imagine he will keep all he saves. You know the farmers are grumbling about his charges."
Osborn frowned. "You talk too much to the farm people; I don't like it. You can be polite, but I want you to remember they are my tenants, and not to sympathize with their imaginary grievances. They're a grumbling lot, but will keep their places if you leave them alone."
He got up abruptly and when he went off across the lawn Mrs. Osborn gave the girl a reproachful glance.
"You are very rash, my dear. On the whole, your father was remarkably patient."
Grace laughed, a rather strained laugh, as Osborn's angry voice rose from behind a shrubbery.
"He isn't patient now, and I'm afraid Jackson is paying for my fault. However, I really think I was patient, too. To talk about people keeping their places is ridiculous; in fact, it's piffle! Father's notions are horribly out of date. One wonders he doesn't know."
"Things change. Perhaps we don't quite realize this when we are getting old. But you mustn't argue with your father. He doesn't like it, and when he's annoyed everybody suffers."
"It's true; but how illogical!" Grace remarked, and mused while she looked dreamily across the grass.
She was romantic and generous, and had learned something about social economy at the famous school; in fact, Osborn would have been startled had he suspected how much she knew. Nevertheless, she was young; her studies were half digested, and her theories crude. She had come home with a vague notion of playing the part of Lady Bountiful and putting things right, but had got a jar soon after she began. Her father's idea of justice was elementary: he resented her meddling, and was sometimes tyrannical. When it was obvious that he had taken an improper line he blamed his agent; but perhaps the worst was he seldom knew when he was wrong. Then the agent's main object was to extort as much money from the tenants as possible.
Grace did not see what she could do, although she felt that something ought to be done. She had a raw, undisciplined enthusiasm, and imagined that she was somehow responsible. Yet when she tried to use some influence her father got savage and she felt hurt. Well, she must try to be patient and tactful. While she meditated, Mrs. Osborn got up, and they went back to the house.
CHAPTER II
THE OTTER HOUNDS
Grace's tweed dress was wet and rather muddy when she stood with Gerald on a gravel bank at the head of a pool, where the beck from the tarn joined a larger stream that flowed through a neighboring dale. There had been some rain and the water was stained a warm claret-color by the peat. Bright sunshine pierced the tossing alder branches, and the rapid close by sparkled between belts of moving shade. Large white dogs with black and yellow spots swam uncertainly about the pool and searched the bank; a group of men stood in the rapid, while another group watched the tail of the pool. Somewhere between them a hard-pressed otter hid.
A few of the men wore red coats and belonged to the hunt; the rest were shepherds and farmers whom custom entitled to join in the sport. All carried long iron-pointed poles and waited with keen expectation the reappearance of the otter. Grace was perhaps the only one to feel a touch of pity for the exhausted animal and she wondered whether this was not a sentimental weakness. There was not much to be said for the otter's right to live; it was stealthy, cruel, and horribly destructive, killing many more fish and moorhens than it could eat. Indeed, before she went to school, she had followed the hunt with pleasant excitement, and was now rather surprised to find the sport had lost its zest.
The odds against the otter were too great, although it had for some hours baffled men who knew the river, and well-trained dogs. It had stolen up shallow rapids, slipping between the watchers' legs, dived under swimming dogs, made bold dashes along the bank, and hidden in belts of reeds. Its capture had often looked certain and yet it had escaped. At first Grace had noticed the animal's confidence, beauty of form, and strength; but it had gradually got slack, hesitating, and limp. Now, when it lurked, half-drowned, in the depths of the pool while its pitiless enemies waited for it to come up to breathe, she began to wish it would get away.
Thorn, the master of the hounds, was talking to his huntsman not far off. He was a friend of Osborn's, and Grace had once thought him a dashing and accomplished man of the world, but had recently, for no obvious reason, felt antagonistic. Alan was not as clever as she had imagined; he was smart, sometimes cheaply smart, which was another thing. Then he was beginning to get fat, and she vaguely shrank from the way he now and then looked at her. On the whole, it was a relief to note that he was occupied.
For a few moments Grace let her eyes wander up the dale to the crags where the force leaped down from the red moor at Malton Head. Belts of dry bent-grass shone like gold and mossy patches glimmered luminously green. The fall looked like white lace drawn across the stones. A streak of mist touched the lofty crag, and above it a soft white cloud trailed across the sky. Then she turned as her brother spoke.
"Alan has given us a good hunt and means to make a kill. He's rather a selfish beast and a bit too sure of himself; but he runs the pack well and knows how to get the best out of life. No Woolwich and sweating as a snubbed subaltern for him! He stopped at home, saw his tenants farmed well, and shot his game. That's my notion of a country gentleman!"
"Father can look after Tarnside and a duty goes with owning land," Grace remarked. "A landlord who need not work ought to serve the State. That idea was perhaps the best thing in the feudal system and it's not altogether forgotten yet. Father was right when he decided to make you a soldier."
"He can send me to Woolwich, but after all that's as far as he can go. You're not at your best when you're improving," Gerald rejoined; and added with a grin, "You don't like old Alan, do you? I thought you snubbed him half an hour since."
Grace colored, but did not answer. She had hurt her foot by falling from a mossy boulder and Thorn had come to help as she floundered across a shallow pool. She was draggled and her hair was loose, and Thorn's faint amusement annoyed her. Somehow it hinted at familiarity. She would not have resented it once, for they had been friends; but when she came home and he had tried to renew the friendship she had noted a subtle difference. Alan was forty, but now she had left school the disparity of their ages was, in a sense, much less marked. Then a shout roused her and she looked round.
Where the smooth, brown water ran past the alder roots, a very small, dark object moved in advance of a faint, widening ripple. Grace knew it was the point of the otter's head; the animal's lungs were empty since it remained up so long. Next moment plunging dogs churned the pool into foam, the object vanished, and men ran along the bank to the lower rapid, while those already there beat the shallow with their poles. The dogs bunched together and began to swim up stream; Gerald and one or two more plunged into the water, and for a few moments the otter showed itself again.
It looked like a fish and not an animal as it broke the surface, rising in graceful leaps. Then it went down, with the dogs swimming hard close behind, and Grace thought it must be caught. It was being steadily driven to the lower end of the stopped rapid, where the water was scarcely a foot deep. The animal reappeared, plunging in and out among the shallows but forging up stream, and the men who meant to turn it back closed up. There was one at every yard across the belt of sparkling foam. They had spiked poles to beat the water and it seemed impossible that their victim could get past.
Yet the otter vanished, and for a minute or two there was silence, until the dogs rushed up the bank. Then somebody shouted, the huntsman blew his horn, and a small,