A FOXHUNT IN THE SOUTHERN HILLS 217 



hounds and the country boys were gone as though 

 they had never been. 



A woman was knitting in the sun at a cottage door. 

 She was a kind woman, and as the wild-eyed riders 

 emerged, strenuously, from the lift, she arose and 

 waved her knitting largely at the hill behind her 

 little house. 



" They're away up the mountain entirely ! " she 

 called to them. 



The huntsman, with a face already redder than his 

 coat, drove his horse in a turkey-cock rush across the 

 road and over the bank. 



The hillside rose sheerly above him. Little mellow 

 flecks of sound came down, and told that the hounds 

 also were above him. There are not many things 

 more hateful than fighting up a hill that is so steep 

 that a rapidly extending view of the horse's back- 

 bone is presented to the rider, but when hounds are 

 out of sight many hateful things can happen unheeded, 

 and a great deal can be done in five minutes, and, in 

 rather less than that time, the huntsman, and those 

 few who clave to him, reached a level place — as it were 

 a wider step in a stair-case — ^and made a pause. 

 An appealing, questioning note on the horn was flung 

 to the hilltop, and " a voice replied, far up the 

 height," " Hurry on ! They're this way ! " 



The mountain rose, in successive steps, sometimes 

 heather and grass, more often bog, each step propped 

 with a cliff of grey rock, and only to be gained by 

 means of a connecting ravine. 



The huntsman, after the manner of his kind, was 

 slipping ahead ; a despairing shout from one of his 

 following caught him but just in time. 



" Mike ! if ye see them, for God's sake give a roar 

 to us ! " 



Thus might Androcles have adjured his friendly lion. 



