After him!
Off galloped the whole party in the track of the hounds, the faces of the two ladies were aglow with the passionate ardour of the chase, and at that instant there occurred to the mind of Fanny her vision of long ago: what if he, her nameless ideal, were now galloping beside her on his swift-footed steed, and could see her impetuously heading the chase till she threw herself down before him, and died there, without anybody knowing why! But Flora thought: "Suppose Rudolf were now to come face to face with me, and see me"—and then she felt again how much she loved him.
And now the fox suddenly emerged again on the open. A newly mown field, of a thousand acres or so in extent, covered with rows of haycocks, lay right before the huntsmen; and here the really interesting part of the hunt began. The fox was a fine specimen, about as big as a young wolf, but much longer in the body, and carrying behind him a provokingly big brush. He trotted leisurely in front, not because he could not go quicker, but because he wanted to economize his strength, and all the time he kept dodging to and fro, backwards and forwards, in the endeavour to tire his enemies
out, and ceaselessly threw glances behind him at his pursuers, out of half an eye, keeping about a hundred paces in front of them, and accelerating his pace whenever he perceived that the distance between him and them was diminishing.
And yet the very best hounds of Squire John's—Cziczke, the two white ones, and Rajkó, Matyi, big Ordas, Michael Kis's Fecske, and Count Gregory's Armida, to say nothing of the whole canine army behind them, were hard upon his traces.
The fox began to go slower and slower. He seemed to regret the brushwood from which he had leaped forth, and kept flying towards one haycock after another; as if he fancied he could find a shelter beside it, and then, snarling savagely, cantered on again. Even from afar he could be seen gnashing his teeth together when he looked back.
And indeed he was in evil case, cooped up on that level ground, where there was neither stream nor hiding-place which might shelter him from his pursuers. Sideways, indeed, lay an arm of the river Berettyo, well-known to crayfish catchers and summer-bathers as a broad and deep stream, and well would it be for him now to have that water between him and the hounds, for the foxhound will not swim if he can help it, but it looked very much as if they would surround him, and tear his skin off his back before he could reach it.
And now it was easy to perceive that his pace was diminishing, as he ran in and out among the haycocks; soon he must be completely surrounded.
"Seize him, Fecske! seize him, Rajkó! seize him, Armida!" resounded from all sides.
The dogs rushed after him with all their might.