A HILL DAY 129 



I was loath to do this, but there seemed no other 

 way of getting sport ; so blowing the disappointed 

 hounds together, we moved on for the famous earths 

 on the opposite side of the valley. 



In passing a patch of heather that had escaped 

 the previous spring's burning, and that was mixed 

 with rough boulders and battered bracken, one or 

 two of the rear hounds hung back, and old Warrior 

 stood still for a moment, feeling the air with his nose 

 before dashing forward, when suddenly, and as if the 

 earth had opened and shot him out, a big supple- 

 looking dog fox projected himself and stretched away 

 like a greyhound, the whole pack screaming after him 

 like distracted beings as he increased his distance 

 from them along the side of the hill. 



*^ That's right, keep out above them," shouted 

 Sandy Oliver, as he cantered past me tying a new 

 cracker on to his thong as he went. " By the 

 Lord, they are scolding him along proper. That 

 beats a blooming kirk organ," he added. 



For full forty minutes we galloped, or rather 

 scrambled, slithered, or floundered over as rough 

 a piece of country as ever tried the mettle of the 

 stoutest horse. No sooner had we surmounted one 

 hilltop than we saw another before us, higher and 

 farther off than the last, and as we breathed our 

 blowing horses before we set them going again, I 

 heard the shout of one or more of the hill-men, 

 *^ There they go ! Yonder they go ! Right forward 

 away ! " as they pointed to the expanding sky-line. 



I freely confess I was no more anxious to keep 

 in sight of hounds than of the active form of the 

 Master of the Talladale and his pony's rat tail, as 



I 



