and so absorbed in his private meditations that he failed to see me,
though I stood transfixed with amazement and admiration, not ten
yards distant. I took his measure at a glance,--a large male, with
dark legs, and massive tail tipped with white,--a most magnificent
creature; but so astonished and fascinated was I by this sudden
appearance and matchless beauty, that not till I had caught the last
glimpse of him, as he disappeared over a knoll, did I awake to my
duty as a sportsman, and realize what an opportunity to distinguish
myself I had unconsciously let slip. I clutched my gun, half
angrily, as if it was to blame, and went home out of humor with
myself and all fox-kind. But I have since thought better of the
experience, and concluded that I bagged the game after all, the best
part of it, and fleeced Reynard of something more valuable than his
fur, without his knowledge.

This is thoroughly a winter sound,--this voice of the hound upon the
mountain,--and one that is music to many ears. The long trumpet-like
bay, heard for a mile or more,--now faintly back in the deep
recesses of the mountain,--now distinct, but still faint, as the
hound comes over some prominent point and the wind favors,--anon
entirely lost in the gully,--then breaking out again much nearer,
and growing more and more pronounced as the dog approaches, till,
when he comes around the brow of the mountain, directly above you,
the barking is loud and sharp. On he goes along the northern spur,
his voice rising and sinking as the wind and the lay of the ground
modify it, till lost to hearing.

The fox usually keeps half a mile ahead, regulating his speed by
that of the hound, occasionally pausing a moment to divert himself
with a mouse, or to contemplate the landscape, or to listen for his