"The man thought it was very queer, but he wasn't frightened. He said to himself that if he couldn't catch raccoons and 'possums, maybe he could catch a fox. So he called up his dogs one morning just about day, mounted his horse, and started out to catch a fox. Before they had gone a hundred yards from the house, the dogs found a warm trail and began to follow it in lively style. The man spurred his horse after them and harked them on. They ran around in a wide circle, and presently something white flitted by the man, with the dogs after it in full cry. As it went by it screamed out:-- "'_You are always after me!_' "Then it disappeared, and after a while the dogs came back, panting as hard as if they had run forty miles. The man went back home and sat by the fire and studied about it, and the more he studied the worse he was troubled. He sat so long without saying anything that his little boy asked him what the matter was, but the man shook his head, and said there were some things that children ought not to know. The boy was fourteen years old, and very small for his age, but he had plenty of sense, and was very brave. He told his mother that his father was in some deep trouble, and begged her to find out what it was, and tell him about it. "So the little boy's mother set herself to work to find out what was troubling her husband. She pressed him so hard with questions that he finally told her about his strange adventures while out hunting. The wife was so frightened that she begged her husband not to go hunting any more, but to give up his dogs and attend to business that was not so dangerous. "The man promised that he would hunt no more raccoons or 'possums or foxes, but he said he needed his dogs to hunt deer. The woman told her son all that her husband had said to her, and after that the little boy made it a habit to go off in the woods and sit at the foot of a big chestnut-tree, and wonder what it was that ran before his father's dogs. "Matters went on this way until finally one day the man said he would go out and catch a deer. He called his dogs, especially Old Top, the oldest one of all. Top was a big hound, and hunted nothing else but deer, and he was never known to fail to run down and catch the deer he got after. Old Top went along when he was called, but it was very plain to the little boy, who was watching, that he didn't go willingly. Anyhow, Old Top went, though he looked back at the little boy and wagged his tail knowingly more than once. "Before the hunter got out of hearing, the dogs struck a trail and pursued it in the direction of the big woods beyond the creek. For a long time the little boy listened to the dogs running. Sometimes they seemed to come nearer, and then they would go farther, and finally the sound of their trailing died away altogether.