FOX-HUNTING 



the Middle Ages attributed the power of seeing ghosts and 

 fairies impalpable to man's gross eyes. Beside, that hare was 

 not travelling in search of food. She was not " loping " along, 

 looking around her right and left, but galloping steadily. She 

 has been frightened, she has been put up : but what has put 

 her up ? And there, far away among the fir-stems, rings the 

 shriek of a startled blackbird. What has put him up ? That, 

 old mare, at sight whereof your wise eyes widen until they are 

 ready to burst, and your ears are first shot forward toward 

 your nose, and then laid back with vicious intent. Stand still, 

 old woman ! Do you think still, after fifteen winters, that you 

 can catch a fox ? A fox, it is indeed ; a great dog-fox, as red 

 as the fir-stems between which he glides. And yet his legs 

 are black with fresh peat stains. He is a hunted fox : but he 

 has not been up long. The mare stands like a statue : but I 

 can feel her trembling between my knees. Positively he does 

 not see us. He sits down in the middle of a ride, turns his 

 great ears right and left, and then scratches one of them with 

 his hind foot, seemingly to make it hear the better. Now he 

 is off again and on. 



' Beneath yon firs, some hundred yards away, standeth, or 

 rather lieth, for it is on dead flat ground, the famous castle of 

 Malepartus, which beheld the base murder of Lampe, the hare, 

 and many a seely soul beside. I know it well : a patch of 

 sand heaps, mingled with great holes, amid the twining fir 

 roots ; ancient home of the last of the wild beasts. 



' And thither, unto Malepartus safe and strong, trots 

 Reinecke, where he hopes to be snug among the labyrinthine 

 windings, and innumerable starting-holes, as the old apologue 

 has it, of his ballium, covert- way and donjon keep. 



' Full blown in self-satisfaction he trots, lifting his toes 

 delicately, and carrying his brush aloft, as full of cunning and 

 conceit as that world-famous ancestor of his, whose deeds of 

 unchivalry were the delight, if not the model, of knight and 

 kaiser, lady and burgher, in the Middle Age. 



' Suddenly he halts at the great gate of Malepartus ; 



21 



