46 THE MOUNTAIN-FOX. 



ing motion at once told that one of us had wounded him. 

 Without stopping to load, I ran to see if there was blood 

 upon the grass, and when thus engaged, the hound, which 

 had recovered the track, came up full cry. I had no 

 choice left but to breast the hill, and, if possible, keep 

 within hearing 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 

 sprung 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 per- 

 fectly 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 



