“He may,” quietly added Trimbush; “but make your work good as ye go. I think,” continued he, “that we have cast to the right, which was the probable line, far enough. Now let us try the left.”
Will Sykes, Ned Adams, and the Squire, now came in sight; but their horses could not be spurred out of a trot. Their heads were between their knees, and their tails shook as if they must drop off.
“How beautifully they work,” I heard the Squire say as he threw himself from the saddle. “Let them alone; pray let them alone.”
We had now made the cast as far to the left as we had done to the right, and yet we could not hit him off.
“I’m sure he’s headed back,” said Wildboy, confidently.
“We’ll try,” replied Trimbush; “but I doubt it.”
“It’s now quite clear,” said the Squire, as we failed to touch the scent in our track, “that the hounds can make nothing of it. They have had a fair trial; now let me see what you can do, William.”
Will threw his strong, keen eye forward, and his ears were pricked for any halloo or indication of the line of the fox; but nothing appeared to enlighten him. He then out with his horn, and was about making a wider and more forward cast than we had made down wind, when Trimbush sprang into the stream, and swam to a small patch of sedge and grass, not a great deal bigger than a man’s hat, and apparently scarcely large enough to hold a rat, when bang the fox sprang from the middle and away he raced, whisking the water from his brush like a maid trundling her mop. We rushed at him in a body, but might as well have attempted to get to the head of a stroke of soaped lightning.
“A trick worthy of the devil’s own,” said Trimbush, laughing, “but I proved a match for him this time.”
“How was it that we could not carry the scent down stream?” inquired I, as the devil’s own became lost to view over the brow of a short but steep hill.