Squire Burley was one of the few Hillside folk who owned a hunter, because in this section all the fox-hunting was a necessity, done in earnest, and afoot, with a swift death by bullet for the hen-roost robbers. The Squire opened his land for the drag-hunt, likewise Miss Jule and several small farmers, for all the crops were in but the stacks of corn stalks. A drag-hunt, as Anne explained to Miss Letty, “is when you put seeds that smell like a fox in a bag and drag it round early in the morning when the dew is heavy and holds the scent down. Then the dogs think it is a fox trail, and run like anything, and never find that there isn’t any fox until it’s too late to back out, and before the next time they forget all about how they were cheated.”
“You will be the only woman to follow,” Mr. Hugh had said to Miss Varley, when the arrangements were completed. “Only two or three of our girls ride, and they never take fences, though Diana here is beginning to train for a huntress.”
Anne had laughed softly at this, and glanced slyly at Miss Letty, for Mr. Hugh had caught them one morning when Anne was trying to coax her father’s horse, Tom, over an improvised hurdle composed of a rake handle set upon two small boxes, which collapsed upon the slightest provocation; but he had not come in time to observe that Miss Letty, who was mounted on Miss Jule’s Brown Kate, could handle a horse very well, and already managed three of the four pasture bars; neither did he know that several years back, when at school in England, she had spent her holidays with the daughters of a farming squire to whom cross-country riding was as familiar a doing as eating breakfast.
When the time was finally set, it chanced to fall upon the very last day of October.
“Surely, the night is Hallowe’en, and so we can have apple and nut sports, and the like,” exclaimed Mrs. Carr, when Mr. Hugh went up to make the arrangements for the supper party which would fill two long tables, one in the dining room and another in the kitchen, making it necessary that one of Mr. Hugh’s maids as well as Mary Anne and Miss Jule’s Anna Maria should help the old lady.
Mr. Hugh’s brake and the bus from the village were to transport the people to and fro, and there would be a picnic lunch on the rocks by the old mill-dam at noon; one of Mr. Hugh’s first improvements having been to repair the broken-down wall, so that the pond would be in good condition for skating, and he had, likewise, put up a small log shelter for the skaters.
Tommy was the only small child invited; but Mr. Hugh knew that he could be trusted to amuse himself and curl up in any corner and go to sleep if he grew weary before going-home time came. Likewise, as such a field day was almost as rare as Christmas that “comes but once a year,” his mother said that he might stay up with the others—that is, if he was able.
When the day came, it was one of those wonderful forerunners of Indian summer; cool in the morning, warm, with a light breeze at noon, and at night clear with a piercing electric brightness rayed from the north.
Most of the trees in the woods were bare, except a few oaks, the dead leaves were crisp to the tread, and witch hazel was in its strange yellow bloom in the hollows, but the leaves still clung in the orchards, and the honeysuckles on farmhouse porches were green and showed sprays of flowers.
Anne and Tommy went to Hilltop with the very first load, which was compounded partly of dogs and partly of the “extras” that Mrs. Carr needed. Neither, of course, were to follow the drag-hunt, but they wanted to be on the spot, and Mr. Hugh had solemnly promised Tommy that if he followed a certain safe wood-path leading round about in a circle, that he should meet a rabbit face to face. While Anne, who delighted in Mrs. Carr’s kitchen, was to have the honour of making a batch of the celebrated seed cakes all by herself. Waddles, his wife, and his son Jack, leashed together for a wonder, rode up with their mistress, for it was not thought best to let them take their chances so early in the day with the rough-and-ready foxhounds; but as they were leaving the brake, Jack Waddles managed to slip loose and bolted off, much to Anne’s worriment.