REDPAD THE FOX 
53 
the hill. The hounds broke into the field on his 
line, wheeled like a flock of plover, and came straight 
to where Redpad lay. It was time to be stirring a 
strange covert is no refuge to a hunted fox. Redpad 
cantered gracefully a little further up the fence, and 
just as he leaped upon the wall in full view of the 
watcher in the field, some erratic puff of wind 
told him that his Beloved had just passed that way 
up the hill to safety. He wavered for a moment, 
then the pack spoke again and he leaped. But he 
had not gone a hundred yards before the hounds 
gave tongue behind him, and a distant voice pro- 
claimed : ' Gone away awa-a-y awa-a-y ! ' 
From the very start Redpad knew where he 
was going, and set his mask towards Knockdane 
on the hill ten miles away. At first the fields he 
crossed were small, and cropped as bare as a billiard- 
table by starveling goats and sheep, while between 
them rose walls of loosely piled stone, five feet high 
and so broad that a horse could walk along the top. 
More than one horseman turned home that day 
with a red bandage round his horse's fetlock, for 
Kilmanagh stones are sharp. 
Two miles slipped by. Redpad kept up his 
best pace, for he felt instinctively that he had not 
increased his lead during the last half-mile, and the 
scent was good that day. He was in the best of 
