There came at length a moment, outside a farm-house, when it seemed as if the fox had beaten us. Here, on the farther side of Castle Knox, I was well out of my own country, and what the fox's point might be was represented by the letter X. Nevertheless it was here that I lifted the hounds and brought off the cast of a life-time; I am inclined to think that he had lain down under a hayrick and was warned of our approach by the voices of my attendant jackasses; my cast was probably not much more of a fluke than such inspirations usually are, but the luck was with me. Old Playboy, sole relic of my deputy Mastership, lifted his white head and endorsed my suggestion with a single bass note; Rally, Philippa's prize puppy, uttered a soprano cadenza, and the pack suddenly slid away over the pasture fields, with the smoothness and unanimity of the _Petits Chevaux_ over their green cloth. It was now becoming for Daniel and me something of an effort to keep our proud and lonely place in or about the next field to the hounds. The fields were coming smaller, the gaps fewer; Daniel had no intention of chucking it, but he gave me to understand that he meant to take the hills on the second speed. And, unfortunately, the hills were coming. The hounds, by this time three fences ahead, flung over a bank on the upgrade, a bank that would give pause for reflection at the beginning of a run. I tried back, scrambled into a lane, followed it up the hill, with the cry of the hounds coming fainter each minute, dragged a cart wheel and a furze bush out of a gap with my crop, found myself in a boggy patch of turnips, surrounded by towering fuchsia hedges, and realised that the pack had passed in music out of sight. I stood still and looked at my watch. It was already an hour and twenty minutes from the word "Go!" and the hounds were not only gone but were still going. A man who has lost hounds inevitably follows the line of least resistance. I retired from the turnip field, and abandoned myself to the lane, which seemed not disinclined to follow the direction in which the hounds had been heading. Since the hayrick episode they had been running right-handed, and the lane bent right-handed over the end of the hill, and presently deposited me on a road. It was one of the moments when the greatness of the world is borne in upon the wayfarer. There was a spacious view from the hill-side; three parishes, at least, offered themselves for my selection, and I surveyed them, solitary and remote as the evening star, and with no more reason than it for favouring one more than another. A harrowing, and, by this time, but too familiar cry, broke on my ear, an undulating cry as of a thing that galloped as it roared. My admirers were still on my trail; I gave Daniel a touch of the spurs and trotted on to the right.