A Run 137 



diversified line of country, with only two slight checks ; 

 how fast it has been the horses show. 



Those who have second horses out are glad to see 

 their servants appear in sight. Paddock by this time is 

 nearing the stables where Boreas is trained, reflecting 

 that chasers are not the most suitable horses for a 

 cramped country. Chipping, who has been down twice, 

 is walking home also, wondering why the big grey, which 

 used to go so generously and well with his former owner, 

 has fallen off so much of late ; for it never occurs to the 

 gallant captain that the horse is much the same but the 

 rider very different. Young Maizeley rides off* to his 

 father and tells him that Mr. Sylvanson has given 200 

 guineas for the four-year-old. As the last of the field 

 trots off down the slope to draw another covert, what in 

 a human being would be a sigh of satisfaction, and what 

 in an animal is much the same thing, comes from the 

 very weary lungs of our friend the fox, lying at full length 

 on the branch of elm. Piunning to view, the eager 

 hounds had overshot their mark ; the fox had slipped 

 exhausted into the ditch on the covert side of the fence. 

 With a last expiring effort, he had sprung up on to a 

 broken wall, had run a little way along it, and leaped 

 still higher into a branch of the tree. A little climbing 

 has landed him in his present resting-place. Perhaps 

 if Tom had not been so hasty in calling his hounds to 

 him further into the covert, they might have hit it off 

 again ; but he, and doubtless they, alike felt certain 

 that their prey was before them ; and though a hound 

 or two had returned to the ditch, they could not carry 

 it on. 



When presently, the covert being quite clear, he 

 slowly descends from his perch, his hmbs are painfully 



