WINTER ANIMALS. 
299 
still and listened to their music, so sweet to a hunter’s 
ear, when suddenly the fox appeared, threading the 
solemn aisles with an easy coursing pace, whose sound 
was concealed by a sympathetic rustle of the leaves, 
swift and still, keeping the ground, leaving his pursuers 
far behind; and, leaping upon a rock amid the woods, he 
sat erect and listening, with his back to the hunter. For 
a moment compassion restrained the latter’s arm; but 
that was a short-lived mood, and as quick as thought can 
follow thought his piece was levelled, and whang!— 
the fox rolling over the rock lay dead on the ground. 
The hunter still kept his place and listened to the hounds. 
Still on they came, and now the near woods resounded 
through all their aisles with their demoniac cry. At 
length the old hound burst into view with muzzle to the 
ground, and snapping the air as if possessed, and ran di¬ 
rectly to the rock; but spying the dead fox she suddenly 
ceased her hounding, as if struck dumb with amaze¬ 
ment, and walked round and round him in silence ; and 
one by one her pups arrived, and, like their mother, were 
sobered into silence by the mystery. Then the hunter 
came forward and stood in their midst, and the mystery 
was solved. They waited in silence while he skinned 
the fox, then followed the brush a while, and at length 
turned off into the woods again. That evening a Wes¬ 
ton Squire came to the Concord hunter’s cottage to in¬ 
quire for his hounds, and told how for a week they had 
been hunting on their own account from Weston woods. 
The Concord hunter told him what he knew and offered 
him the skin; but the other declined it and departed. 
He did not find his hounds that night, but the next day 
learned that they had crossed the river and put up at a 
