short as a hare, and they, running breast-high, have
turned with him each time, not over-running it a yard.

See how the sheep have drawn together into phalanx yonder, in that bare
pasture to the eastward; he has crossed that field for a thousand! Yes,
I am right. See! they turn once again. What a delicious rally! An
outspread towel would cover those four leading hounds--now Dauntless has
it; has it by half a neck.

"He always goes up when a fox is sinking," Harry exclaimed, pointing
toward him with his hunting whip.

Aye! he has given up his point entirely; he knew he could not face the
hill. Look! look at those carrion crows! how low they stoop over that
woody bank. That is his line. Here is the road again. Over it once more
merrily! and now we view him.

"Whoop! Forra-ard, lads, forra-ard!"

He cannot hold five minutes; and see, there comes fat Tom pounding that
mare along the road as if her fore-feet were of hammered iron; he has
come up along the turnpike, at an infernal pace, while that turn favored
him; but he will only see us kill him, and that, too, at a respectful
distance.

Another brook stretches across our course, hurrying to join the greater
stream along the banks of which we have so long been speeding; but this
is a little one; there! we have cleared it cleverly. Now! now! the
hounds are viewing him. Poor brute! his day is come. See how he twists
and doubles, Ah! now they have him! No! that short turn has saved him,
and he gains the fence--he will lie down there! No! he stretches
gallantly across the next field--game to the last, poor devil! There!

"Who-whoop! Dead! dead! who-whoop!"

And in another instant Harry had snatched him from the hounds, and
holding him aloft displayed him to the rest, as they came up along the
road.

"A pretty burst," he said to me, "a pretty burst, Frank, and a good
kill; but they can't stand before the hounds, the foxes here, like our
stout islanders; they are not forced to work so hard to gain their
living. But now let us get homeward; I want my breakfast, I can tell
you, and then a rattle at the quail. I mean to get full forty brace
to-day, I promise you."

"And we," said I, "have marked down fifteen brace already toward it;
right in the line of our beat, Tom says."

"That's right; well, let us go on."

And in a short half hour we were all once again assembled about Tom's
hospitable board, and making such a breakfast, on every sort of eatable
that can be cr