Happy got up and turned her other side to the fire, before she continued. She felt uneasy, and thought perhaps she had eaten too much sausage; but it was so good and she always felt hungry. “The hunting, where did the dogs go?” prompted Waddles. [Illustration: “_He stood in his gateway holding his gun._”] “They ran down the lane together until they reached the low woods by the brook, and after trampling the trails into a snarl, they divided, the beagles keeping in the rabbit land. The others climbing up the rocks and following the ledge that goes on and on until it is Pine Ridge, where the fox lairs are and the best coon-trees. For of course the old hounds remembered the real hunting days when any autumn day might find the Squire’s hounds chained to the fence in readiness while he stood in the gateway holding his gun waiting to fire the signal to tell the neighbours that a fox had been seen, when they would gather men and dogs to scramble afoot over rocks and briers. Of course as you are a house fourfoot, I suppose you never went fox-hunting; but I will tell you one thing, it is no work for beagles; our legs are too short, for the foxhounds lope like horses and we get nowhere.” “I’ve been,” answered Waddles, putting on a worldly wise expression, such as Hamlet used to wear when he did tricks, and before he found himself, “I haven’t forgotten it. I was away two nights and a day and Missy thought me dead because it was at the time we had adventures and saw strange things and we had been to the far woods to see the _Bad One_ die, only two days before. “At first I followed the fox trail with the hounds. It’s a queer trail, and smells rank and raw, not ripe and delicious like a rabbit’s. Soon I fell back and stumbled, for they went over places I could only crawl through, and then I sprained a paw and drew into a corner where the moss was soft, to rest. When I waked up it was early morning, and I was stiff and hungry. I tried to surprise a rabbit for breakfast, but the wind was the wrong way and they scented me first. I was too lame to walk much at a time, and I had to rest often. Toward afternoon I caught a mole and tried to eat it, but ugh! it had such a horrid flavour that it sickened me, and the fur was loose and gave me a cough. Just before night I caught a red squirrel that was trying to rob a nest and got pecked in the eye and fell out of the tree. The squirrel was an old fighter, with iron legs, a leather body, and wooden insides, not a bit juicy, and only good to chew. Next morning I limped home in time to breakfast on kidney stew. I tell you what it is, the hunting is fine for sport and killing, but living by it is quite another thing, and running with foxhounds is not good for beagles.” “Well, as I was saying,” continued Happy, “the old foxhounds kept on up to Pine Ridge, the little ones following very well, but the setter pups turned off at the Mill cross-roads and got into trouble.