At any
rate a kind of chill suddenly struck Wat Danbury, and it flashed through
his mind that there had been some very singular points about this run--
its length and its straightness, and the fact that from the first find
no one had ever caught a glimpse of the creature. Some silly talk which
had been going round the country about the king of the foxes--a sort of
demon fox, so fast that it could outrun any pack, and so fierce that
they could do nothing with it if they overtook it--suddenly came back
into his mind, and it did not seem so laughable now in the dim fir-wood
as it had done when the story had been told over the wine and cigars.
The nervousness which had been on him in the morning, and which he had
hoped that he had shaken off, swept over him again in an overpowering
wave. He had been so proud of being alone, and yet he would have given
10 pounds now to have had Joe Clarke's homely face beside him. And
then, just at that moment, there broke out from the thickest part of the
wood the most frantic hullabaloo that ever he had heard in his life.
The hounds had run into their fox.
"Well, you know, or you ought to know, what your duty is in such a case.
You have to be whip, huntsman, and everything else if you are the first
man up. You get in among the hounds, lash them off, and keep the brush
and pads from being destroyed.
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