FOX-HUNTING 



sees us, turns short, and vanishes into the 

 gloom. The mare pricks up her ears too, listens, 

 and looks : but not the way the hare has gone. 

 There is something more coming ; I can trust the 

 finer sense of the horse, to which (and no wonder) 

 the Middle Ages attributed the power of seeing 

 ghosts and fairies impalpable to man's gross 

 eyes. Besides, 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. 



35 



