"Where are they going to start the fox? Don't you let the dogs--" "Oh!" with a long intonation of comprehension, "why, we've got the fox with us; first catch your fox, you know--" "Who--where?" "Why, Mr. Payne has him. Every boy in the county knows he will pay a big price for a fox. They have their traps out and when they catch one they bring it in to him, and then--" a comprehensive wave of her hand finished the sentence. "The dogs--" began Lawson, still unenlightened. "Oh they put the dogs up in the stables, don't you see? Watch them!" she turned in the trap seat and Lawson wheeled his horse. A boy stood guard at the stable door. One by one their masters were coaxing and coercing the dogs inside. Their calls echoed all over the field. "Here, Dixie!" "Here, Duke!" and now and then an impatient master wound his horn to call his dogs to his feet, whereat every dog inside the big echoing stable went fairly mad with barking. "H-e-r-e, M-u-s-i-c!" "H-e-r-e, S-a-l!" Two frisky dogs were careering down the hillside, their masters in wild pursuit. "There they go, the two worst dogs in the county!" cried Frances impatiently. "And the two best hunters, once they are started!" declared Mr. Payne. Lawson, tired of the dogs' antics, turned his attention to the scene about him. The hill rolled from where they waited down to a wide stream at its foot. It was waste land, and the long grasses were deeply green or purple with seed-pods or browned with sering weeds; down by the stream was a tangle, scarlet and yellow leaved, and gray and purple-stemmed, a tangle of sumach and blackberry and bramble; and beyond, on the climbing land, was the great forest where the pine showed vivid green and the chestnut flared like gold in the sunshine gilding the hillside and pricking out all its colorings--the oaks' persistent russet, the changing hues of the tangled undergrowth. About him were riders of every description; smart vehicles filled with bright-faced women, the farmer in top-boots astride his nag, the Englishman from his fancy stock farm in the country hard by on his bobtailed horse and wearing the toggery of his irreproachable hunting outfit, women in jackets or long skirts on skittish-looking steeds, and women in tailor-made habits exact in set and fit, with stiff derbies on their smooth hair and heavy crops in their hands. The hounds were all prisoned at last. The men who had dismounted hurried to their horses. Those who had not, settled themselves in their saddles. In the tense silence all the sounds of the morning could be heard, the deep breathings of the horses, the creakings of the saddles, even the wind stealing through the grasses and singing in the trees of the forest across the way and the gurgling of the stream about the rocks in its bed.