to better advantage than she did, sitting on her
spirited bay mare under an arch of scarlet leaves which curved over her
head. Turning at their approach, she started at a brisk canter up the
road, and as Virginia followed her, the sound of the horn floated, now
loud, now faint, out of the pale mist that spun fanciful silken webs
over the trees and bushes.

"Remember to look out for the creeks. That's where the danger comes,"
said Oliver, riding close to her, and he added nervously, "Don't try to
keep up with Abby."

Ahead of them stretched a deserted Virginia road, with its look of
brooding loneliness, as if it had waited patiently through the centuries
for a civilization which had never come; and on the right of it, beyond
a waste of scarlet sumach and sassafras and a winding creek screened in
elder bushes, the dawn was breaking slowly under a single golden-edged
cloud. Somebody on Virginia's left--a large, raw-boned, passionate
huntsman, in an old plum-coloured overcoat with a velvet collar--was
complaining loudly that they had started too late and the fox would have
gone to his lair before they reached the main party. Except for an oath,
which he rapped out by way of an emphasis not intended for the ladies,
he might have been conducting a religious revival, so solemnly
energetic, so deeply moved, was his manner. The hunt, which observed
naturally the characteristics of a society that was ardently
individualistic even in its sports, was one of those informal,
"go-as-you-please" affairs in which the supreme joy of killing is not
hampered by tedious regulations or unnecessary restrictions. The chief
thing was to get a run--to start a rare red fox, if luck was good,
because he was supposed to run straight by nature and not to move in
circles after the inconsiderate manner of the commoner grey sort. But
Providence, being inattentive to the needs of hunters in the
neighbourhood of Dinwiddie, had decreed that the red fox should live
there mainly in the vivid annals of old sportsmen.

"A grey fox with red ears. The best run I ever had. Tried to get in the
crotch of a hickory tree at the end. Was so exhausted he couldn't stir a
foot when the hounds got him." While they waited at the crossroads
before a little country store, where the pack of hounds, lean, cringing,
habitually hungry creatures, started from beneath an old field pine on
the right, Virginia heard the broken phrases blown on the wind, which
carried the joyous