“I don’t know that,” rejoined the old hound. “It’s very tantalizing and dispiriting to be stopped the moment a fox, which we have taken the trouble and pains to find, breaks away. We meet with enough disappointments which can’t be avoided, throughout a season, without having such as these thrust upon us.”
“But we are continually so stopped in cub-hunting,” returned Rubicon.
“That’s quite a different matter,” said Trimbush. “There are then two or three brace of ’em afoot, perhaps, and they get headed back as well as ourselves. We can always reckon, too, upon plenty of sport at that time; but at the end of a season, when foxes are thin, it——”
At this moment I winded the glorious scent again, and, throwing my tongue, bang a great dark-coloured fox went across a ride. Trimbush cut short his harangue, and, forgetting the cause of his anger, flew to my side, and away we rattled.
“Have at him!” hallooed Will. “Have at him, darlings! Yoiks, have at him!”
Up went Tom Holt’s cap again.
“All right, sir,” I heard him say. “As fine a dog-fox as ever was seen.”
Through the furze we dashed, and out burst more than two-thirds of us close to his brush.
Twang, twang, twang, twang, went Will’s horn.
“For’ard, for’ard!” hallooed Ned Adams: “get to him hounds, get to him! For’ard! for’ard!”