hat they had regarded it as impossible that
their master should move so fast. And Dillon, and the whips, and
Thoroughbung, and Harry Annesley, with half a dozen others, kept pace
with him. They would not sit there and see their master outmanoeuvred by
any lack of readiness on their part. They got to the covert first, and
there, with their whips drawn, were ready to receive the second pack.
Then one hound went in without an order; but for their own hounds they
did not care. They might find a fox and go after him, and nobody would
follow them. The business here at the covert-side was more important and
more attractive.

Then it was that Mr. Thoroughbung nearly fell into danger. As to the
other hounds,--Mr. Fairlawn's hounds,--doing any harm in the covert, or
doing any good for themselves or their owners, that was out of the
question. The rival pack was already there, with their noses up in the
air, and thinking of anything but a fox; and this other pack,--the
Hitchiners,--were just as wild. But it was the object of Mr. Fairlawn's
body-guard to say that they had drawn the covert in the teeth of Mr.
Harkaway, and to achieve this one of the whips thought that he could
ride through the Puckeridge men, taking a couple of hounds with him.
That would suffice for triumph.

But to prevent such triumph on the part of the enemy Joshua Thoroughbung
was prepared to sacrifice himself. He rode right at the whip, with his
own whip raised, and would undoubtedly have ridden over him had not the
whip tried to turn his horse sharp round, stumbled and fallen in the
struggle, and had not Thoroughbung, with his horse, fallen over him.

It will be the case that a slight danger or injury in one direction will
often stop a course of action calculated to create greater dangers and
worse injuries. So it was in this case. When Dick, the Hitchin whip,
went down, and Thoroughbung, with his horse, was over him,--two men and
two horses struggling together on the ground,--all desire to carry on the
fight was over.

The huntsman came up, and at last Mr. Fairlawn also, and considered it
to be their duty to pick up Dick, whose breath was knocked out of him by
the weight of Joshua Thoroughbung, and the Puckeridge side felt it to be
necessary to give their aid to the valiant brewer. There was then no
more attempt to draw the covert. Each general in gloomy silence took off
his forces, and each afterward deemed that the victory was his. Dick
swore, when brou