ds tempestuously. The hounds had now started a fox,
but they were still a long way off, and the field was so scattered that
the artful beast seemed likely to throw them off his track. He kept
plunging into the bushes while his pursuers dashed past, and then, all
of a sudden, darted off side-ways. But fruitless was all his craftiness;
he only rushed into a fresh foe, and tried vainly to hide or double:
there was no refuge to be found anywhere, and the quick cracking of
whips on every side of him told him that a war of extirpation against
his whole race was on foot, so he resolved on flight, and gained the
very first hillock, where he stopped for a moment, looked round to see
from what direction the enemy was coming, and then made for the reeds
with all his might.

"Look! the fox, the fox!" cried his pursuers, when they perceived him on
the hillock: the next moment he had disappeared from it.

But they had seen enough of him to perceive that he was a splendid
beast. He was evidently an old stager, who would give the best dogs
something to do.

After him!

Off galloped the whole party in the track of the hounds, the faces of
the two ladies were aglow with the passionate ardour of the chase, and
at that instant there occurred to the mind of Fanny her vision of long
ago: what if he, her nameless ideal, were now galloping beside her on
his swift-footed steed, and could see her impetuously heading the chase
till she threw herself down before him, and died there, without anybody
knowing why! But Flora thought: "Suppose Rudolf were now to come face to
face with me, and see me"--and then she felt again how much she loved
him.

And now the fox suddenly emerged again on the open. A newly mown field,
of a thousand acres or so in extent, covered with rows of haycocks, lay
right before the huntsmen; and here the really interesting part of the
hunt began. The fox was a fine specimen, about as big as a young wolf,
but much longer in the body, and carrying behind him a provokingly big
brush. He trotted leisurely in front, not because he could not go
quicker, but because he wanted to economize his strength, and all the
time he kept dodging to and fro, backwards and forwards, in the
endeavour to tire his enemies out, and ceaselessly threw glances behind
him at his pursuers, out of half an eye, keeping about a hundred paces
in front of them, and accelerating his pace whenever he perceived that
the distance between him and them was dim