It was young Colonel’s first day of life.  He was out in the great dog world, and about him were the mighty hunters of the valley.  Arnold Arker was there with his father’s rifle, once a flint-lock, always a piece of marvellous accuracy, and a hero as guns go, and the old man patted the puppy and pulled his silky ears.  Tip Pulsifer approved of him.  Tip shut one eye and gazed at him long and earnestly; he ran his bony fingers down the slender back to the very end of the agitated tail.  One by one he took the heavy paws in his hands and stroked them.  Then Tip smiled.  Murphy Kallaberger smiled too, and declared that the young un took after his pa; clarifying this explanation he pointed his fat thumb over his shoulder to old Captain, beating around the underbrush.

It was young Colonel’s first day of life.  And what a day to live, I thought, as I stroked his head and wished him luck!  He could not get it into his puppy brain that I was to wait there while the others went racing down the slope into the wooded basin below, so he lingered, to sit before me on his haunches, his head cocked to one side, eyeing me inquisitively.  There was a tang in the air.  The wind was sweeping along the ridge-top and the woods were shivering.  All about us rattled Nature’s bones, in the stirring leaves, in the falling pig-nuts, in the crash of the belated birds through the leafless branches.  The sun was over us, and as I looked up to drink with my eyes of the warm light, I was taking a draught of God’s best wine from off yonder in the north, of the wine that quickens the blood and drives away the brain-clouds.  A day of days this was to race over the ridges while the music of the hounds rang through them; a day of days to dash from thicket to thicket, over the hills and through the hollows, leaping logs and vaulting fences, with every sense keyed to the highest; for the fox is a clever general.  So young Colonel was puzzled, for there I was on a log, at the crest of the ridge, with my crutches at one side and my gun at the other, when I should be away after old Captain, the real leader of the sport, after Arnold and Tip and Betsy.  This was the best I could do, to sit here and listen and hope—­listen as the chase went swinging along the ridges; hope that a kind fate and an unwise Reynard would bring them where I could add the bark of my rifle to the song of the hounds.  You can’t explain everything to a dog.  With a puppy it is still harder.  So Colonel was restless.  He looked anxiously down the hill; then he lifted those soft, slantwise eyes to mine very wistfully.

“Go, Colonel,” I commanded, pointing to the hollow.

Instead, he came to me and lifted to my knee one of those ponderous feet of his, and tried to pull me from my log.

“Aren’t you coming?” he seemed to say.

“No, old chap,” I answered, pulling the long ears gently till he smiled.  “I prefer it here where I can look over the valley, and from here I can see where Mary lives—­down yonder on the hillside; that’s the house by the clump of oaks, where the smoke is curling up so thick.”