THE SILVER FOX 165 



knelt, with her hand thrust in the bosom of 

 her dress to grasp the picture of the Sacred 

 Heart that hung around her neck, the cry 

 of hounds came to her ear; it approached 

 rapidly, and she jumped up, full of a blind 

 indignation against those who, for their 

 own amusement, had wrecked the fortunes 

 of a family, and now came to gallop past 

 the house of death, guided by that grey 

 and ill-omened thing. Half-a-dozen hounds 

 passed her, hot on the line of the fox, with 

 their heads up; they overran it and tried 

 back, then picked it up by the shed as if 

 they were lapping it off the grass, and with 

 whimpers bursting into the firm note of 

 hunting, went away up the hill and were 

 lost to sight amongst the furze. Others 

 followed in their track, and Maria, maddened 

 by their brutal self- engrossment, their cheery 

 and inconsequent voices, ran in the direction 

 from which they had come, with some in- 

 flaming idea of stopping the riders who would 

 follow, equally self-engrossed, infinitely 

 more brutal and desecrating. 



