Only half a dozen were up with them now; the pace was tremendous, though all over grass; here a flight of posts and rails tried the muscle of the boldest; there a bullfinch yawned behind the blackthorn; here a big fence towered; there a brook rushed angrily among its rushes; while the keen, easterly wind blew over the meadows, and the pack streamed along like the white trail of a plume.  Cecil “showed the way” with the self-same stride and the self-same fencing as had won him the Vase.  Lady Guenevere and the Seraph were running almost even with him; three of the Household farther down; the Zu-Zu and some Melton men two meadows off; the rest of the field, nowhere.  Fifty-two minutes had gone by in that splendid running, without a single check, while the fox raced as gamely and as fast as at the find; the speed was like lightning past the brown woods, the dark-green pine plantations, the hedges, bright with scarlet berries; through the green low-lying grasslands, and the winding drives of coverts, and the boles of ash-hued beech trunks, whose roots the violets were just purpling with their blossom; while far away stretched the blue haze of the distance, and above-head a flight of rooks cawed merrily in the bright air, soon left far off as the pack swept onward in the most brilliant thing of the hunting year.

“Water!  Take care!” cried Cecil, with a warning wave of his hand as the hounds, with a splash like a torrent, dashed up to their necks in a broad, brawling brook that Reynard had swam in first-rate style, and struggled as best they could after him.  It was an awkward bit, with bad taking-off and a villainous mud-bank for landing; and the water, thickened and swollen with recent rains, had made all the land that sloped to it miry and soft as sponge.  It was the risk of life and limb to try it; but all who still viewed the hounds, catching Bertie’s shout of warning, worked their horses up for it, and charged toward it as hotly as troops charge a square.  Forest King was over like a bird; the winner of the Grand Military was not to be daunted by all the puny streams of the Shires; the artistic riding of the Countess landed Vivandiere, with a beautiful clear spring, after him by a couple of lengths:  the Seraph’s handsome white hunter, brought up at a headlong gallop with characteristic careless dash and fine science mingled, cleared it; but, falling with a mighty crash, gave him a purler on the opposite side, and was within an inch of striking him dead with his hoof in frantic struggles to recover.  The Seraph, however, was on his legs with a rapidity marvelous in a six-foot-three son of Anak, picked up the horse, threw himself into saddle, and dashed off again quick as lightning, with his scarlet stained all over, and his long fair mustaches floating in the wind.  The Zu-Zu turned Mother of Pearl back with a fiery French oath; she hated to be “cut down,” but she liked still less to risk her neck; and two of the Household were already treated to “crackers” that disabled