Hark!—­a distant whoop—­another, a blast of a horn, and then a burst of chiding that makes the woods ring.  Down drops the bill, and together, heedless of any social difference in the common joy, we scramble to the highest mound, and see the pack sweep in full cry across the furrows.  Crash—­it is the bushes breaking, as the first foam-flecked, wearied horse hardly rises to his leap, and yet crushes safely through, opening a way, which is quickly widened by the straggling troop behind.  Ha! down the lane from the hill dashes another squadron that has eroded the chord of the arc and comes in fresher.  Ay, and a third is entering at the bottom there, one by one, over the brook.  Woods, field, and paths, but just before an empty solitude, are alive with men and horses.  Up yonder, along the ridge, gallops another troop in single file, well defined against the sky, going parallel to the hounds.  What a view they must have of the scene below!  Two ladies who ride up with torn skirts cannot lift their panting horses at the double mound.  Well, let us defy ‘wilful damage’ for once.  The gate, jealously padlocked, is swiftly hoisted off its hinges, and away they go with hearty thanks.  We slip the gate on again just as some one hails to us across the field to wait a minute, but seeing it is only a man we calmly replace the timber and let him take his chance.  He is excited, but we smile stolidly.  In another minute the wave of life is gone; it has swept over and disappeared as swiftly as it came.  The wood, the field, and lane seem painfully—­positively painfully—­empty.  Slowly the hedger and ditcher goes back to his work, where in the shade under the bushes even now the dew lingers.

So there are days to be enjoyed out of doors even in much-abused November.  And when the wind rises and the storm is near, if you get under the lee of a good thick copse there is a wild pleasure in the frenzy that passes over.  With a rush the leaves stream outwards, thickening the air, whirling round and round; the tree-tops bend and sigh, the blast strikes them, and in an instant they are stripped and bare.  A spectral rustling, as the darkness falls and the black cloud approaches, is the fallen leaves in the copse, lifted up from their repose and dashed against the underwood.  Then a howl of wrath descends and fills the sense of hearing, so that for the moment it is hard to tell what is happening.  A rushing hiss follows, and the rain hurtles through the branches, driving so horizontally as to pass overhead.  The sheltering thorn-thicket stirs, and a long, deep, moaning roar rises from the fir-trees.  Another howl that seems to stun—­to so fill the ears with sound that they cannot hear—­the aerial host charges the tree-ranks, and the shock makes them tremble to the root.  Still another and another; twigs and broken boughs fly before it and strew the sward; larger branches that have long been dead fall crashing downwards; leaves are forced right through the thorn-thicket, and strike against