the morning they continued their quest; they streamed in a long,
irregular line up the hillside, their black and tan and white coats
gaily conspicuous in the sunlight; they trickled over the hedgerows, and
dotted the furrows of the deserted ploughlands; they moved in "open
order" through the copse, and plodded along by the furze-brakes or
through the undergrowth where the sharp-thorned brambles continually
annoyed and impeded them; they worked as if time needed not to be taken
into the slightest account. The least scent met with loud and hearty
recognition; fancy ran riot with the excited puppies; the atmosphere at
every turn seemed to betray the near presence of Puss. But every
condition of weather and fortune was against good sport. The ground was
steadily thawing in the warmth of the sun, and the rising vapour,
trembling in the light, seemed to carry the scent too high for accurate
hunting.

So the hare ambled along her line of flight--a wide, horse-shoe curve
that began and ended in the fallow on the slope. When a considerable
distance had been placed between herself and her pursuers, she ceased
to hurry. Indeed, the music of horn and hounds seemed almost to
fascinate the creature, and frequently she lingered for a few moments to
listen intently to the clamour of her enemies. A farm labourer, who
tried to "grab" her as she passed down the grassy lane, said that she
"was coming along as cool as a cucumber. Sometimes she'd sit down to
tickle her neck with her hind-feet. Then she'd give a big jump,
casual-like, to one side of the path, and sit down again, with her ears
twitching and turning as if she thought there was mischief in every
flutter of a leaf or creak of a bough."

Frightened almost out of her wits by the labourer's sudden and well-nigh
successful endeavour to secure her, Puss rushed back along the lane,
crossed a gap, and sped over the uplands once more, leaving her usual
horse-shoe line of flight, and taking a much greater curve towards the
fallow. But gradually her pace slackened as she discovered she was no
longer followed; and then, not far from her lair by the spring, she
paused to rest. The music of the hounds was faint, distant, and
intermittent; and at last it entirely ceased. Somewhat exhausted
towards the end of her journey, she had withheld her scent, and had thus
completely outwitted her slow but patient pursuers.

Once, and once only, towards the end of January, she found herself
chased by