“He is playing about the summit,” says my companion.

“Let us go there,” say I, and we are off.

More dense snow-hung woods beyond the clearing where we begin our ascent of the Big Mountain,—­a chief that carries the range up several hundred feet higher than the part we have thus far traversed.  We are occasionally to our hips in the snow, but for the most part the older stratum, a foot or so down, bears us; up and up we go into the dim, muffled solitudes, our hats and coats powdered like millers’.  A half-hour’s heavy tramping brings us to the broad, level summit, and to where the fox and hound have crossed and recrossed many times.  As we are walking along discussing the matter, we suddenly hear the dog coming straight on to us.  The woods are so choked with snow that we do not hear him till he breaks up from under the mountain within a hundred yards of us.

“We have turned the fox!” we both exclaim, much put out.

Sure enough, we have.  The dog appears in sight, is puzzled a moment, then turns sharply to the left, and is lost to eye and to ear as quickly as if he had plunged into a cave.  The woods are, indeed, a kind of cave,—­a cave of alabaster, with the sun shining upon it.  We take up positions and wait.  These old hunters know exactly where to stand.

“If the fox comes back,” said my companion, “he will cross up there or down here,” indicating two points not twenty rods asunder.

We stood so that each commanded one of the runways indicated.  How light it was, though the sun was hidden!  Every branch and twig beamed in the sun like a lamp.  A downy woodpecker below me kept up a great fuss and clatter,—­all for my benefit, I suspected.  All about me were great, soft mounds, where the rocks lay buried.  It was a cemetery of drift boulders.  There! that is the hound.  Does his voice come across the valley from the spur off against us, or is it on our side down under the mountain?  After an interval, just as I am thinking the dog is going away from us along the opposite range, his voice comes up astonishingly near.  A mass of snow falls from a branch, and makes one start; but it is not the fox.  Then through the white vista below me I catch a glimpse of something red or yellow, yellowish red or reddish yellow; it emerges from the lower ground, and, with an easy, jaunty air, draws near.  I am ready and just in the mood to make a good shot.  The fox stops just out of range and listens for the hound.  He looks as bright as an autumn leaf upon the spotless surface.  Then he starts on, but he is not coming to me, he is going to the other man.  Oh, foolish fox, you are going straight into the jaws of death!  My comrade stands just there beside that tree.  I would gladly have given Reynard the wink, or signaled to him, if I could.  It did seem a pity to shoot him, now he was out of my reach.  I cringe for him, when crack goes the gun!  The fox squalls, picks himself up, and plunges over the brink of the mountain.  The hunter has not missed his aim, but the oil in his gun, he says, has weakened the strength of his powder.  The hound, hearing the report, comes like a whirlwind and is off in hot pursuit.  Both fox and dog now bleed,—­the dog at his heels, the fox from his wounds.