He may have lain an hour amid the bright new herbage before the boy whistled. His ears showed that he heard, but he took no further notice. When the whistle was repeated he growled. Then the boy screamed, as I have heard the huntsman scream after me; and the great brindled brute leapt to his feet and bounded down the hill at a pace I had not thought any creature capable of. I knew then that no fox could get away from him in the open, or escape with his life when overtaken.
"No more stealing of old gobblers," said I under my breath as I slunk away to the earth.
For some days I scarcely slept on account of the worry; and the more I thought it over in the quiet of my kennel, the surer I felt that this great restless hound would render life unbearable by invading my cover. Was it likely that a creature pricked by pride of limb and of fang would be content to wander within the narrow confines of a dozen fields criss-crossed with trails, and never trespass on the environing wilds to which the trails led? Impossible! Is there not an eternal feud between the tame and the wild canine? This half-wild protege of man, free to wander at will and wreak his vengeance on us hated dwellers in the brake, able too by speed and strength to carry out his fell designs, was certain, sooner or later, to follow the cursed scent that lingers where we tread, and track me to my hidden lair.
The days went by, however, and I was not molested; though night after night, as I heard his threatening bay, I asked myself, How long shall I be left in peace? When a fortnight passed without a sign, I began to think that this sharer of man's hearth might, after all, be nothing more than a noisy farmyard braggart, brave enough, perhaps, on grass or plough-land, but afraid to trespass on the waste. Rudely was my mistake brought home to me.
Now what I am going to tell is not something I have heard: I saw it with my own eyes on the moor which rises from the head of the fen. I was trotting along at the time, planning how best to work the ground on such a still night, when a fox—a stranger to me—came over the brow on my left, and dashed across my front at a gallop. At first I thought he must have some game in sight; but as neither hare nor leveret was to be seen, I could not help, in the absence of any apparent reason for his conduct, imagining that he must be mad, like a fox I once saw crossing the bar. Strange fancy, perhaps; but then, what sane animal, and, above all, what fox, would waste his speed after nothing? And what in the world was there for the fugitive to fly from? Suddenly I thought of the hound, and as suddenly, just when the fox had disappeared where the land dipped, I heard the thud of heavy feet. Peeping between two boulders that concealed me from view, I saw him come over the crest at the spot where I first caught sight of the fox. He was running by scent, but at so tremendous a pace that I feared the fox could not live before him.
His silence chilled me more than his loud bay; but though I could not detect the faintest whimper, every moment there was a strange clicking sound—a noise foreign to the moorland. When he came abreast of me I saw it was caused by the broken chain that hung from his neck and struck the steel collar he wore. In a twinkling the dusky fiend had disappeared in the gloom, his head set for the tor. I listened. After a time I heard him crash through a long bramble thicket. Then a long interval. Then the owls, which had been very noisy, suddenly ceased their midnight chorus. They were watching the tragic chase between the boles of the pines. How it ended I never knew; but I am inclined to think that the fox reached the rocks and escaped. If he had been killed, the foxes which lodged on the western slope of the tor would have forsaken their coverts, at least for a time; and this they did not do.
That night it was useless to try to hunt, as I kept looking back every dozen strides for fear the hound might be following me. At last I gave it up; but I did not return along my usual trail, laid when the night had no fear for me. I avoided open ground as much as possible, to steal along tangled dips and gullies. Before crossing a ridge I halted to peer through the darkness, fearful of seeing the sinister green eyes that would apprise me of the hound's approach.
On reaching the double trail, I cleared it at a bound, as though it had been a line of fire, and made for the river at the spot where it spreads over the marshes; for I hoped by swimming it at its widest part to add to the difficulties of the hound if he should follow me. Although the precautions I took proved unnecessary, I mention a few of them to show the fear the creature had inspired in me. After that I used to foil the runs in the brake for the purpose of puzzling him if he chanced to strike my night's trail and tried to trace me to my lair.
But of what avail were all my wiles against a creature so endowed? At length the marvellous powers he possessed enabled him not only to find my kennel, but to approach it so noiselessly as almost to surprise me in my sleep. Had it not been for the slight rustling of the furze, caused by his grim protruding muzzle, he must have taken me where I lay as a fox takes a rabbit in its seat. As it was it was a close call. Enraged at my escape, he came crashing after me. I led him to the cover beyond the quarry, where the furze was close and stunted, and where the runs were so small that he had to force a way along them. In these unfavorable conditions I thought he would soon tire of pursuit; but to my surprise he persisted hour after hour, despite the stifling atmosphere of the brake on such a close, hot day. Could he have driven me into the open I should have been at his mercy; I knew this as well as he, and never gave him the chance he longed for.
In the end I wearied him out, and none too soon, for I was almost spent before he relinquished the chase. I had escaped, but my dread of the fiend was greater than ever—so great, indeed, that I never went near the brake again as long as he lived.