312 SYSTEM OF KENXEL AND 



board, and it seemed doubtful sometimes which 

 would be the winner biped or quadruped. Charles 

 James feared to commit himself with an opponent 

 quite as wide awake as himself, who would have 

 taken advantage of him the moment he caught him 

 making an imprudent move; and Will Headman 

 had resolved that when he did make that move, and 

 faced the open for Beacon Hill earths, his brush 

 should be in his hand before he could reach them ; 

 therefore Charles James thought to compass his 

 ends by a deviation from the straight line, which a 

 younger vulpine in his ignorance would have at- 

 tempted, and been eaten up before he had gone half 

 way. 



He had felt the pace at which he had been hurried 

 along in the first burst by Will Headman's lurching 

 hounds, superior in speed and quickness to the pack 

 in his own country, which for three seasons had 

 been outrun by him and their huntsman outwitted, 

 and wisely endeavoured, by seeking the shelter of 

 the big wood, to put a greater distance between his 

 brush and the noses of these rattlers. A wild 

 scream from Jem proclaimed his flight a second 

 time only two fields ahead of the pack ; and another 

 burst over all grass land brought him in view just 

 as he gained the wood hedge of the last large covert, 

 over which the hounds bounded all abreast into the 

 high covert, and through it they pressed him out 

 into the drive, which he held to for three hundred 

 yards or so ; then turned short into the younger 

 coppice. For a second the tongues are silent, the 

 leading hounds in their eagerness having overrun 



