Now and then, as twilight advanced, he stopped and listened. One of the guards, more kindly disposed than Simmons and the other guard, had, during the hour of lunch one day, told him something about the bloodhound, Sheriff. The dog, he said, was not a full-bred bloodhound, his grandfather was a foxhound. Consequently, he ran a man freely, as a hound runs a fox, barking on the trail. He was hard to hold in, the guard had gone on to say, so hard that Simmons never tried to run him to the leash, but turned him loose to find the track himself. Then Simmons followed as fast as he could. No trouble to follow him. "You never heard such a voice as he's got in your life," the guard had added with a grin. "He usually puts a man up a tree inside two hours, and keeps him there till Simmons comes up. No danger of the man comin' down, either--not with that dog at the bottom of the tree." And so, remembering these things, old Tom stopped now and then to listen. No sound but the steady dripping of rain from trees--no sound of pursuit. Miles lay between him and the camp, and still the rain was washing his trail. It was on top of a treeless hill that commanded the sights and sounds of the country for miles about that he stopped once more to listen--and his white hair stirred on his head, just as the hair of the old fox who has run all night might rise on his back. From far behind through the enveloping mists and over intervening hills, so far that at first he could not be sure, had come the bay of a solitary hound, trailing. He stood transfixed, his patriarchal beard dripping. Many a creature, fox and wolf, and man himself, has through the centuries trembled at that sound. There was a silence during which he collected his wits, momentarily upset. Then again, faint and far away, like the ringing of a distant bell, came the sound. Miles between where he swung himself out of the creek and where he now stood the hound was coming on his trail. Tom turned like a stag, brushed aside the bushes and began for the first time to run. At the top of the next hill, not having heard it while he crashed through the undergrowth of the bottom, he stopped again, panting. Though still far away and faint, it was unmistakable now, and there was in the sound a note of melancholy triumph and joy. The shrewdness of all hunted animals took hold of the old man's nature. He ran half a mile, then turned and doubled his track. At a stony spot, where a trail does not remain long at best, he stopped, swung his arms and jumped as far as he could to the right. For a quarter of a mile he continued trotting at right angles to the original trail; then he turned once more toward the mountains.