320 THE MOUNTAIN-FOX. 



possible, keep within sound of the dog. Panting and 

 breathless, I could hear the bay more and more distant, 

 and was just beginning to fear that the fox's object was 

 the savage ravines of Glen-Douglas, when it ceased on a 

 sudden. Encouraged by the hope that he might be run 

 down, I redoubled my exertions, and after scrambling a 

 mile and a half from where I fired, saw the hound at check, 

 at the top of the pine- wood where it joins the heather. I 

 made several unsuccessful casts above ; and then, thinking 

 that, unable to climb the hill, he had returned to the 

 shelter of the wood, I was making a circle below, when he 

 sprang out of the heather, not thirty yards off, and ran 

 straight down the hill, his lagging and staggering gait 

 showing that he had got his death-wound. I would now 

 have given a good deal had my gun been loaded ; but not 

 a moment was to be lost, as the hound viewed the fox, and 

 was again full cry. I dashed over stock and stone, but 

 it was not long before there was another pause in mid 

 career. When I came up, the ground was perfectly bare, 

 not a furze-bush to cover a rat, and the hound completely 

 at fault. I had just taken out my powder-flask to load, 

 when, from no other concealment than the bare stem of a 

 fallen fir-tree, the fox a second time burst out, as fair a 

 shot as I could wish. The hound was close to his brush, 

 so back went my powder-flask into my pocket, and I 

 rushed down the steep with reckless desperation. The bay 

 became fainter and fainter ; my head grew dizzy ; I had 

 run a distance of three miles on one of the steepest hills in 

 Scotland, and had just given up hope of another check, 



