Therefore Campbell seldom argued with him: but he prayed for him often; for he had begun, as all did who saw much of Tom Thurnall, to admire and respect him, in spite of all his faults.
And now, turning through a woodland path, they descend toward the river, till they can hear voices below them; Scoutbush laughing quietly, Trebooze laying down the law at the top of his voice.
"How noisy the fellow is, and how he is hopping about!" says Campbell.
"No wonder: he has been soaking, I hear, for the last fortnight, with some worthy compeers, by way of keeping off cholera.

I must have my eye on him to-day." Scrambling down through the brushwood, they found themselves in such a scene as Creswick alone knows how to paint: though one element of beauty, which Creswick uses full well, was wanting; and the whole place was seen, not by slant sun-rays, gleaming through the boughs, and dappling all the pebbles with a lacework of leaf shadows, but in the uniform and sober grey of dawn.
A broad bed of shingle, looking just now more like an ill-made turnpike road than the bed of Alva stream; above it, a long shallow pool, which showed every stone through the transparent water; on the right, a craggy bank, bedded with deep wood sedge and orange-tipped king ferns, clustering beneath sallow and maple bushes already tinged with gold; on the left, a long bar of gravel, covered with giant "butter-bur" leaves; in and out of which the hounds are brushing--beautiful black-and-tan dogs, of which poor Trebooze may be pardonably proud; while round the burleaf-bed dances a rough white Irish terrier, seeming, by his frantic self-importance, to consider himself the master of the hounds.
Scoutbush is standing with Trebooze beyond the bar, upon a little lawn set thick with alders.

Trebooze is fussing and fidgetting about, wiping his forehead perpetually; telling everybody to get out of the way, and not to interfere; then catching hold of Scoutbush's button to chatter in his face; then, starting aside to put some part of his dress to rights.
His usual lazy drawl is exchanged for foolish excitement.

Two or three more gentlemen, tired of Trebooze's absurdities, are scrambling over the rocks above, in search of spraints.

Old Tardrew waddles stooping along the line where grass and shingle meet, his bulldog visage bent to his very knees.
"Tardrew out hunting ?" says Campbell.