restrains him, and the other hounds pay no attention to him.  Suddenly a sharp, quick yelp comes from the farthest corner of the field, and the older dogs stop instantly and raise their heads to listen.  Hark to old Blucher!  There he is again, and the whole pack give tongue and dash off to the call which never deceives them.  We catch a glimpse of the old fellow’s white throat as he trots about in a zigzag course, poking his tan muzzle into every clump of tall grass and giving tongue occasionally as he sniffs the cold trail.  Presently a long, quavering cry comes from old Firefly; again and again Blucher opens more and more eagerly; another and another dog takes it up, and the trot quickens into a lope.  The trail grows warmer as they follow the line of fence, and just as we settle ourselves in the saddle for a run it all stops and the dogs are at fault.  But Blucher is hard to puzzle and knows every trick of his cunning game.  Running a few panels down the fence, he rears up on it and snuffs the top rail, and then, with a yell of triumph, dashes over it into the woods, with the whole pack in full cry at his heels.  A ringing cheer announces that the fox has “jumped,” and the field scatters in pursuit.  Two only, the subscriber being one, follow the dogs with a flying leap.  Some dash off in search of a low panel, others to head off the cry through the distant gate, while others stop to pull the rails and make a gap.  For ten minutes we keep well behind the hounds, with a tight rein and heads bent to avoid the hanging oak limbs.  But the fox has turned and plunged into a brake which no horse can go through, and we draw up and listen to decide where we can head him off with the greatest certainty; then turn in different directions and spur through the young black-jacks.  Ah! there he goes, with dragging brush and open mouth, and the pack, running close enough together to be covered by a table-cloth, not sixty yards behind him.  I am in at the death this time, for he cannot run a hundred yards farther, and the brush is mine, for there’s no one else in sight.  With a savage burst the dogs dash after him into the thicket and then—­dead silence, not a yelp, as they scatter and run backward and forward, nosing under every dead leaf and up the trunk of every tree.  The fault is complete, and the young dogs give it up and lie down panting, while the older hounds try every expedient to puzzle out the trail and take up the scent again.  He certainly has not treed, there is neither earth nor hollow to hide him, and yet the scent has gone!  And it never came back.  If any reader can tell what became of that fox, he is a wiser man than I. Certain it is that we never heard of him again; and for aught I know to the contrary, he may have been that identical Japanese animal which turns into tea-kettles and vanishes in puffs of smoke.  It does not take long, however, to make another find, and we go home after a three hours’ chase with two fine brushes and appetites which would ruin any hotel-keeper in a week.