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ins, aunts. Mark Damsel's mad delight! 

 See him leap and circle a black ghost, light 

 and swift wider, ever wider, in his round. 

 Often sedge quite hides him, briers swal- 

 low him up, but nothing daunts or hinders. 

 Ah ! he has found hear the low, yelping 

 cry that Music so enviously seconds. The 

 tones are wondrous individual. Music's 

 note might be all-compact of echoes from 

 his dozen ancestral strains. Blood tells 

 especially hounds' blood. Damsel's clear 

 belling sets all the field aring. 



Hither and yon he dashes, nose to earth, 

 tail high and waving. Truly, Master Pos- 

 sum came in by crooked ways. The trail- 

 ing dogs give tongue but sparely, so swift, 

 so winding, do they run along his track. 

 Around, across, it goes, now along the crest- 

 ing upland, now deep in the thick swales. 

 Now comes chorus of deep baying. Dam- 

 sel has treed there to the right, in that 

 single tall persimmon-tree. And look ! this 

 clear moon shows two of the gray glut- 

 tons crouching close in its slender upper 

 boughs. No use to try and shake them 

 out ; the slight limbs would bear scarce a 

 heavier weight than theirs. It is a case for 

 the axes ah ! how swift they fly. Almost 

 before the baying dogs catch breath the 



