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WALDEN. 
dies, run part way across, and then return to the same 
shore. Ere long the hounds arrived, but here they lost 
the scent. Sometimes a pack hunting by themselves 
would pass my door, and circle round my house, and 
yelp and hound without regarding me, as if afflicted 
by a species of madness, so that nothing could divert 
them from the pursuit. Thus they circle until they fall 
upon the recent trail of a fox, for a wise hound will for¬ 
sake every thing else for this. One day a man came to 
my hut from Lexington to inquire after his hound that 
made a large track, and had been hunting for a week 
by himself. But I fear that he was not the wiser for 
all I told him, for every time I attempted to answer his 
questions he interrupted me by asking, “ What do you 
do here ? ” He had lost a dog, but found a man. 
One old hunter who has a dry tongue, who used to 
come to bathe in Walden once every year when the 
water was warmest, and at such times looked in upon 
me, told me, that many years ago he took his gun one 
afternoon and went out for a cruise in Walden Wood; 
and as he walked the Wayland road he heard the cry 
of hounds approaching, and ere long a fox leaped the wall 
into the road, and as quick as thought leaped the other 
wall out of the road, and his swift bullet had not touched 
him. Some way behind came an old hound and her 
three pups in full pursuit, hunting on their own account, 
and disappeared again in the woods. Late in the 
afternoon, as he was resting in the thick woods south of 
Walden, he heard the voice of the hounds far over 
toward Fair Haven still pursuing the fox; and on they 
came, their hounding cry which made all the woods ring 
sounding nearer and nearer, now from Well-Meadow, 
now from the Baker Farm. For a long time he stood 
