“Do ye think I’m a madded fool?” came angrily from the chauffeur.
“Oh! we don’t. We know you’re a brick. We know you’ll help us. Oh! don’t you—don’t you see how this would spoil all the trip?”
She shivered—and in the paling forgetmenot blue of the eyes near his own Andrew saw the blight that would fall over the hiking start, at least, and cursed his luck that they should meet up with the “black cow”—misfortune—this early in the day.
The fox still sat, making “sifflication.”
“But—but you must help, too, Una.” Pem was plucking the smart little costly coat from her friend’s shoulders, as she spoke. “You—you’ll have to help hold him down.”
“Oh! I daren’t. He might—bite.” Great, glassy tears rolled over Una’s eyelids, down her cheeks.
Did—did one of those passive tears, as it fell upon her bare hand, suddenly become a detector, a crystal detector, through which she picked up something from the air, by eye not by ear now, the memory, the ghost of a faint claim, it seemed, wafted from somewhere, made upon somebody—through a radio ring.
“Yes, I-I’ll help! Oh-h! it must be awful to be trapped.” She stumbled from the car.
“Warry—warry now!” Andrew was springing, at the same time, from his seat, drawing on thick gloves. “Hoot! I suppose a mon has got to make the ill-best of a bad job—but he’ll be an ill one to tackle, all tooth an’ claw.”
Already Pemrose, with the glossy huddle of soft beaver in her arms, was stealing towards the tortured thing that groveled and cackled again upon three legs—the fourth stuck out straight.
“Now, Unie, _now_ quick—jump in—hold it down over him, tight,” she gasped “Over his head!”
And while girlish pluck pinned the coat—and the stifled form under it—to earth, Andrew’s quick hand found the spring of the steel trap, shaped like a bear’s jaws, and pressed it.
A convulsion under the smothering coat! A scraping—tearing and ripping!
He had a free try at the fence now. But he was weak. He fell back—licked his leg passionately and tried again.
He was over. Looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, he was limping between waving grasses across the strip of rank meadow that separated the snake-fence from the woods.
“Fair gude day to ye!” grunted Andrew. “But ye might say: ‘Bethankit’!”