156 THE SILVER FOX 



answered the relentless spur. The mist 

 thickened on the higher levels, Lady Susan 

 and the hounds were suddenly lost to sight, 

 and, after a minute or two of fruitless gal- 

 loping, Hugh pulled up and listened, with 

 his pulses thumping and his mouth dry. 

 A curlew whistled overhead, a trembling 

 crescent of sound, then, high up the hill to 

 his left, he heard again the cry of the 

 hounds. He rode to it desperately, skirt- 

 ing a high furzy knoll, and at the other 

 side caught sight of the pack beginning to 

 run fast again after a check, and his wife 

 was still near them. He saw Solomon slip 

 over a bank and ditch with all the seeming 

 ease of a clever horse well ridden, and he 

 cursed him and his rider aloud. The paltry 

 blasphemy w^ent out into the wind and mist, 

 and was swallowed up in their large and 

 pure philosophy, and it had scarcely left his 

 lips when the greyness that blurred the 

 hill-top became thinner as it drifted, and 

 he saw three tall Druid stones stand out 

 against the sky. 



