g, with his scarlet stained all over, and his long fair
mustaches floating in the wind. The Zu-Zu turned Mother of Pearl back
with a fiery French oath; she hated to be "cut down," but she liked
still less to risk her neck; and two of the Household were already
treated to "crackers" that disabled them for the day, while one Melton
man was pitched head foremost into the brook, and another was sitting
dolorously on the bank with his horse's head in his lap, and the poor
brute's spine broken. There were only three of the first riders in
England now alone with the hounds, who, with a cold scent as the fox led
them through the angular corner of a thick pheasant covert, stuck like
wax to the line, and working him out, viewed him once more, for one
wild, breathless, tantalizing second; and through the straggling street
of a little hamlet, and got him out again on the level pasture and
across a fine line of hunting country, with the leafless woods and the
low gates of a park far away to their westward.

"A guinea to a shilling that we kill him," cried the flute-voice of her
brilliant ladyship, as she ran a moment side by side with Forest King,
and flashed her rich eyes on his rider; she had scorned the Zu-Zu,
but on occasion she would use betting slang and racing slang with the
daintiest grace in the world herself, without their polluting her lips.
As though the old fox heard the wager, he swept in a bend round toward
the woods on the right; making, with all the craft and speed there were
in him, for the deep shelter of the boxwood and laurel. "After him, my
beauties, my beauties--if he run there he'll go to ground and save his
brush!" thundered the Seraph, as though he were hunting his own hounds
at Lyonnesse, who knew every tone of his rich clarion notes as well as
they knew every wind of his horn. But the young ones of the pack saw
Reynard's move and his meaning as quickly as he did; having run fast
before, they flew now; the pace was terrific. Two fences were crossed as
though they were paper; the meadows raced with lightning speed, a ha-ha
leaped, a gate cleared with a crashing jump, and in all the furious
excitement of "view," they tore down the mile-long length of an avenue,
dashed into a flower garden, and smashing through a gay trellis-work of
scarlet creeper, plunged into the home-paddock and killed with as loud
a shout ringing over the country in the bright, sunny day as ever was
echoed by the ringing cheers of the Shi