“Looky yonder, Marse Joe! what dat gwine ’cross de Bermuda pastur’?”
Across the brow of the hill slipped a tawny shadow—slipped across and disappeared before Miss Carter could see it.
“That’s Old Sandy,” cried Joe; “now watch for Jonah!”
Presently the hounds could be heard again, coming nearer and nearer. Then a larger and a darker shadow sprang out of the woods and swept across the pasture, moving swiftly and yet with the regularity of machinery. At short intervals a little puff of vapor would rise from this black shadow, and then the clear voice of Jonah would come ringing over the valley. Then the rest of the dogs, a group of shadows, with musical voices, swept across the Bermuda field.
“Oh, how beautiful!” exclaimed Miss Carter, clapping her little hands.
“Wait,” said Joe; “don’t make any noise. He’ll pass here, and go to the fence yonder, and if he isn’t scared to death you’ll see a pretty trick.”
It was a wide circle the fox made after he passed through the Bermuda field. He crossed the little stream that ran through the valley, skirted a pine thicket, ran for a quarter of a mile along a plantation path, and then turned and came down the fallow ground that lay between the creek and the hill where Joe and Miss Carter, with Harbert, had taken their stand. It was a comparatively level stretch of nearly a half-mile. The old corn-rows ran lengthwise the field, and down one of these Old Sandy came in full view of those who were waiting to see him pass. He was running rapidly, but not at full speed, and, although his tongue was hanging out, he was not distressed. Reaching the fence two hundred yards away from the spectators, he clambered lightly to the top, sat down on a rail and began to lick his fore-paws, stopping occasionally, with one paw suspended in the air, to listen to the dogs. In a moment or two more Jonah entered the field at the head of the valley. Old Sandy, carefully balancing himself on the top rail of the fence, walked it for a hundred yards or more, then gathering himself together sprang into the air and fell in the broom-sedge fully twenty feet away from the fence.
“Oh, I hope the dogs won’t catch him!” exclaimed Miss Carter. “He surely deserves to escape!”
“He got sense like folks,” said Harbert.
“He stayed on the fence too long. Just look at Jonah!” cried Joe.