? He held up his hand to show he had heard, and stood still.

One hound spoke, sharply, in the depths of the woody glen. Another and
another joined in. In a moment, the echoing glen was full of voices;
it was impossible to tell what was happening. A couple and a half
emerged on the farther side in the heather above the trees, working a
line upwards, and speaking to it as they went. Larry saw the Master
force his horse down near them, and heard him cheering them and
doubling his horn. Another couple joined them, and Larry swore
heartily. Here he was on the wrong side, and the fox away to the east!
The cry redoubled; it sounded as if twice the pack were engaged, yet
the two and a half couple were not being reinforced. By some chance
Larry withdrew his eyes from them, and just then, about a hundred
yards further on, on his side of the glen, something like a brown
feather floated up into view.

"A second fox, by the living Jingo!" whispered Larry, thrilling to
that sight that never fails to thrill.

He held up his hat. Bill saw the signal, and acknowledged it by
redoubled efforts to get the hounds away with the fox that had broken
to the east. The chorus of sound grew and grew, and as Joker and his
rider, tense with an equal excitement, listened, it became plain that
the cry was drawing nearer to them. Joker's sensitive ears were
twitching, his heart thumped; the storm of sound was just below them
now, and then, hound by hound, Larry counted them as they came,
fourteen couples struggled up over the lip of the glen where that
brown feather had so lightly lifted into view, and drove ahead, on the
way it had gone, with a rush and a cry that Larry could no more have
checked than he could have stemmed and driven back the wild stream in
the glen below.

It may be said at once that he made no such futile effort. With a
single glance at the frenzied party on the farther side, already
galloping distractedly for a possible pass lower down the glen, Larry
released his feelings in a maniac howl to the fleeting pack, and let
Joker--who had already stood up on his hind legs twice, in legitimate
protest--follow them.

The fox, having begun by running west, away from the glen, had then
turned right-handed, and was heading north over the mountain whose
lower slopes were cleft by Gloun Kieraun. The scent served well; the
gurgling music with now and then a sharper note, like a fife among
flutes and 'cellos, flowed on, and Larry and Joke