“He’s down there, boys. I’ll take Bub an’ Bugle, an’ pap to carry the rope, an’ when we find where he is, y’all stretch ’round above us, an’ I’ll go in an’ sic up the dogs. Len, you hold Buck. He’s my dog, an’ I ain’t savin’ him, but bein’ a fox-dog he’s better fer the run, of it comes to runnin’. They’s the masterest ivy thicket ’bout a quarter furder, an’ ef we roust him out he’s liable to make fer it.” We began the descent, and as I stumbled laboriously downward I thought of Serena sitting by her fire, no doubt singing one of the many ballads which she had learned from her grandmother, and which had probably been sung by a score of generations before her without ever losing its essence in print. I stifled a lyrical regret and clung resolutely to my commercial mood. About thirty yards from the top we scattered and took our stations as Sam directed. “Ef he breaks out, beat the bushes an’ make a noise like the whole Cher’kee nation full of corn-juice.” Sam then went farther down, and was beginning to peer cautiously about for the boar when Len cried out: “Hold on! There he is! At the top!” We looked up and saw the boar above us, monstrously outlined at the top of the ridge. He was huge and black, and my startled eyes magnified him to a fearsome thing. I found out later that he was not of inordinate size. He was poking a nose that seemed several feet long over the verge of a sheer cliff. There were simultaneous howls from the three dogs. The boar’s bristles rose like black Lombardy poplars; and as he flung himself around, his tusks, whiter than the whitest cloud, seemed to circle the heavens. He shot along the ridge, Buck plunging after him. “Foller him, fellers,” shouted Sam. “I’ll take Bub an’ Bugle an’ make fer the thicket. That’s where he’s goin’.” Len, Burl, Ted, and Ben began to leap up the mountainside and were soon racing along the ridge trail. I could be of no use in heading off the boar, and after one staggered look upward at the almost vertical slope I decided to follow Sam and granpap. Snead was of the same mind, and we struggled along, swinging from bushes and scrambling over boulders until we arrived at the ivy thicket, which was not ivy at all, but a mass of twisted kalmia from which several great chestnut trees rose in triumph. From somewhere in the tangled interior I could hear Sam’s voice constantly repeating a formula, “Sic ’im, Bub! Sic, sic, sic!”--not loud but in a steady tone, half pleading, half commanding. Snead crawled into the thicket, and in about ten minutes was back again.