stomed to the ground, to trot along, but where, quitting the track
for half a yard's breadth, the rider might be either bogged or
precipitated down the bank. This wonder was not diminished when he came
to the place of action.

They had gradually ascended very high, and now found themselves on a
mountain-ridge, overhanging a glen of great depth, but extremely narrow.
Here the sportsmen had collected, with an apparatus which would have
shocked a member of the Pychely Hunt; for, the object being the removal
of a noxious and destructive animal, as well as the pleasures of the
chase, poor Reynard was allowed much less fair play than when pursued in
form through an open country. The strength of his habitation, however,
and the nature of the ground by which it was surrounded on all sides,
supplied what was wanting in the courtesy of his pursuers. The sides of
the glen were broken banks of earth and rocks of rotten stone, which sunk
sheer down to the little winding stream below, affording here and there a
tuft of scathed brushwood or a patch of furze. Along the edges of this
ravine, which, as we have said, was very narrow, but of profound depth,
the hunters on horse and foot ranged themselves; almost every farmer had
with him at least a brace of large and fierce greyhounds, of the race of
those deer-dogs which were formerly used in that country, but greatly
lessened in size from being crossed with the common breed. The huntsman,
a sort of provincial officer of the district, who receives a certain
supply of meal, and a reward for every fox he destroys, was already at
the bottom of the dell, whose echoes thundered to the chiding of two or
three brace of foxhounds. Terriers, including the whole generation of
Pepper and Mustard, were also in attendance, having been sent forward
under the care of a shepherd. Mongrel, whelp, and cur of low degree
filled up the burden of the chorus. The spectators on the brink of the
ravine, or glen, held their greyhounds in leash in readiness to slip them
at the fox as soon as the activity of the party below should force him to
abandon his cover.

The scene, though uncouth to the eye of a professed sportsman, had
something in it wildly captivating. The shifting figures on the
mountain-ridge, having the sky for their background, appeared to move in
the air. The dogs, impatient of their restraint, and maddened with the
baying beneath, sprung here and there, and strained at the slips, which
prevented t