Sylvia noted with dissatisfaction and some self-contempt that the
course of her next afternoon's ramble took her instinctively clear
of the network of woods. As to the horned cattle, Mortimer's
warning was scarcely needed, for she had always regarded them as
of doubtful neutrality at the best: her imagination unsexed the
most matronly dairy cows and turned them into bulls liable to "see
red" at any moment. The ram who fed in the narrow paddock below
the orchards she had adjudged, after ample and cautious probation,
to be of docile temper; to-day, however, she decided to leave his
docility untested, for the usually tranquil beast was roaming with
every sign of restlessness from corner to corner of his meadow. A
low, fitful piping, as of some reedy flute, was coming from the
depth of a neighbouring copse, and there seemed to be some subtle
connection between the animal's restless pacing and the wild music
from the wood. Sylvia turned her steps in an upward direction and
climbed the heather-clad slopes that stretched in rolling
shoulders high above Yessney. She had left the piping notes
behind her, but across the wooded combes at her feet the wind
brought her another kind of music, the straining bay of hounds in
full chase.
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