Chapter Three.
A Day of Adventure.
If we have any tears all ready to flow, it is satisfactory to know that they will not be required at present. If we have poetic fire and genius, even these gifts may for the time being be held in reservation. No “Ode to a Dying Fox” or “Elegy on the Death and Burial of Reynard” will be necessary. For Reynard did not die; nor was he shot; at least, not sufficiently shot.
In one sense this was a pity. It resulted in mingled humiliation and bitterness for Archie and for the dogs. He had pictured to himself a brief moment of triumph when he should return from the chase, bearing in his hand the head of his enemy—the murderer of the Ann hen’s husband—and having the brush sticking out of his jacket pocket; return to be crowned, figuratively speaking, with festive laurel by Elsie, his sister, and looked upon by all the servants with a feeling of awe as a future Nimrod.
In another sense it was not a pity; that is, for the fox. This sable gentleman had enjoyed a good run, which made him hungry, and as happy as only a fox can be who knows the road through the woods and wilds to a distant burrow, where a bed of withered weeds awaits him, and where a nice fat hen is hidden. When Reynard had eaten his dinner and licked his chops, he laid down to sleep, no doubt laughing in his paw at the boy’s futile efforts to capture or kill him, and promising himself the pleasure of a future moonlight visit to Burley Old Farm, from which he should return with the Ann hen herself on his shoulder.
Yes, Archie’s hunt had been unsuccessful, though the day had not ended without adventure, and he had enjoyed the pleasures of the chase.
Bounder, the big Newfoundland, first took up the scent, and away he went with Fuss and Tackier at his heels, the others following as well as they could, restraining the dogs by voice and gesture. Through the spruce woods, through a patch of pine forest, through a wild tangle of tall, snow-laden furze, out into the open, over a stream, and across a wide stretch of heathery moorland, round quarries and rocks, and once more into a wood. This time it was stunted larch, and in the very centre of it, close by a cairn of stones, Bounder said—and both Fuss and Tackier acquiesced—that Reynard had his den. But how to get him out?
“You two little chaps get inside,” Bounder seemed to say. “I’ll stand here; and as soon as he bolts, I shall make the sawdust fly out of him, you see!”