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"I haven't heard of any other harm that he has done, and perhaps he had some provocation for that." Words were wanting to Mr. Runce, but not indignation. He collected together his plate and knife and fork and his two glasses and his lump of bread, and, looking the Senator full in the face, slowly pushed back his chair and, carrying his provisions with him, toddled off to the other end of the room.
He was too heavy and short-winded; too fond of his beer and port wine; but he was a hunting man all over, one who always had a fox in the springs at the bottom of his big meadows, one to whom it was the very breath of his nostrils to shake hands with the hunting gentry and to be known as a staunch friend to the U.R.U. A man did not live in the county more respected than John Runce, or who was better able to pay his way.
When the Scrobbyites heard that Scrobby had gone all the way to Norrington to buy strychnine to kill rats they were Scrobbyites no longer. "I hope they'll hang 'un. I do hope they'll hang 'un," said Mr. Runce quite out loud from his crowded seat just behind the attorney's bench. The barrister of course struggled hard to earn his money.
Gotobed, a fat man with a round head, and a bullock's neck, dressed in a black coat with breeches and top-boots. John Runce was not a riding man.
Hounds and foxes all one! or little childer either for the matter o' that, if they happened on the herrings!" "I have not said his cause was good, Mr. Runce." "I'll wish you good evening, Sir George," said the farmer, reining his pony round. "Good evening to you, sir." And Mr. Runce trotted or rather ambled off, unable to endure another word. "An honest man, I dare say," said the Senator.
"But a blackguard may have a good cause. Put it in your own case, Mr. Runce. If his Lordship's pheasants ate up your wheat " "They're welcome; they're welcome! The more the merrier. But they don't. Pheasants know when they're well off." "Or if a crowd of horsemen rode over your fences, don't you think " "My fences! They'd be welcome in my wife's bedroom if the fox took that way. My fences!
"I am very glad to see you have changed your principles, Sir." "Not a bit of it. I am too old to change my principles, Mr. Runce. And much as I admire this country I don't think it's the place in which I should be induced to do so." Runce looked at him again with a scowl on his face and with a falling mouth. "Mr. Goarly is certainly a blackguard." "Well; I rather think he is."
It's what I has fences for, to be ridden over." "You didn't exactly hear what I have to say, Mr. Runce." "And I don't want. No offence, sir, if you be a friend of my Lord's; but if his Lordship was to say himself that Goarly was right, I wouldn't listen to him. A good cause, and he going about at dead o' night with his pockets full of p'ison!
Runce also thought that he knew the gentleman. "Do you hunt to-morrow, Mr. Runce?" asked Sir George. "Well, Sir George, no; I think not. I b'lieve I must go to Rufford and hear that fellow Scrobby get it hot and heavy." "We seem all to be going that way. You think he'll be convicted, Sir." "If there's a juryman left in the country worth his salt, he'll be convicted," said Mr.
Goarly's goose immortal, and in imitating the indignation of Runce the farmer and Bean the gamekeeper showed that he was master of considerable humour. But he brought it all round at last to his own purpose, and ended this episode of his lecture by his view of the absurdity and illegality of British hunting. "I can talk about it to you," he said, "and you will know whether I am speaking the truth.
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