THE CHASE OF THE HIND. 177 



will go on as if nothing had happened. But in two 

 minutes Arthur too is up to him, and the hound knows 

 all is right. *' Hold hard, old man," says Arthur, for 

 *'hold hard" is Arthur's word for stopping hounds, 

 and many of them will obey it even when enforcement 

 thereof is impossible — across a valley for instance — for 

 they are wise enough to know that a fresh deer will take 

 longer to kill than a tired one, and have known a deer 

 of the wrong kind saved out of their very jaws. The 

 majority of the hounds are not very hard to stop, 

 unless they are close to a deer, but some are hardly to 

 be stopped by Arthur himself. It must be very bewil- 

 dering for them to hear "ware stag" one day and 

 "ware hind" the next, but somehow they seem to 

 understand it, and it is only after being stopped a 

 dozen times in quick succession that they sometimes 

 grow disgusted and decline to draw for a fresh deer. 



But here is the master galloping up with the pack 

 and the remainder of the small field after him, having 

 hardly lost five minutes. Arthur draws hounds across 

 the line : they feather for a moment and dash away best 

 pace, "Telegram" striding away at their head, but 

 with much ado to keep his place. In three hundred 

 yards we meet the whip, who having viewed the hind, 

 was on the spot in case the tufters should give us the 



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