HUNTING THE FOX
Next moment the magistrate wiped something on his handkerchief and then laid it on the table and put one of my cartridges beside it. It was the bullet that had killed he fox.
"Look here!" he said. And it was too true. The bullets were the same.
A thrill of despair ran through Oswald. He knows now how a hero feels when he is innocently accused of a crime and the judge is putting on the black cap, and the evidence is convulsive and all human aid is despaired of.
"I can't help it," he said, "we didn't kill it, and that's all there is to it."
The white-whiskered magistrate may have been master of the fox-hounds, but he was not master of his temper, which is more important, I should think, than a lot of beastly dogs. He said several words which Oswald would never repeat, much less use in his own conversing, and besides that he called us "obstinate little beggars."
Then suddenly Albert's uncle entered in the midst of a silence freighted with despairing reflections. The M. F. H. got up and told his tale: it was mainly lies, or, to be more polite, it was hardly any of it true, though I suppose he believed it.
"I am very sorry, sir," said Albert's uncle, looking at the bullets. "You'll excuse my asking for the children's version?"
"Oh, certainly sir, certainly," fuming, the fox-hound magistrate replied.
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