Now straight through the pines and the underbrush They follow the scent through the forest’s hush. And their deep-mouthed bay is a pulse of fear In the heart of the wood that the man must hear. The man who crouches among the trees From the stern-faced men that follow these. A huddle of rocks that the ooze has mossed— And the trail of the hunted again is lost. An upturned pebble; a bit of ground A heel has trampled—the trail is found. And the woods re-echo the bloodhounds’ bay As again they take to the mountain way. A rock; a ribbon of road; a ledge, With a pine-tree clutching its crumbling edge. A pine, that the lightning long since clave, Whose huge roots hollow a ragged cave. A shout; a curse; and a face aghast, And the human quarry is laired at last. The human quarry, with clay-clogged hair And eyes of terror, who waits them there; That glares and crouches and rising then Hurls clods and curses at dogs and men. Until the blow of a gun-butt lays Him stunned and bleeding upon his face. A rope, a prayer, and an oak-tree near. And a score of hands to swing him clear. A grim black thing for the setting sun And the moon and the stars to look upon. PENURY Above his misered embers, gnarled and gray, With toil-twitched limbs he bends; around his hut, Want, like a hobbling hag, goes night and day, Scolding at windows and at doors tight-shut. DESERTED The old house leans upon a tree Like some old man upon a staff: The night wind in its ancient porch Sounds like a hollow laugh. The heaven is wrapped in flying clouds As grandeur cloaks itself in gray: The starlight flitting in and out, Glints like a lanthorn ray. The dark is full of whispers. Now A fox-hound howls: and through the night, Like some old ghost from out its grave, The moon comes misty white. _Bert Leston Taylor_ Bert Leston Taylor was born at Goshen, Massachusetts, November 13, 1866, and educated at the College of the City of New York. He had been engaged in journalism since 1895, conducting his column “A Line o’ Type or Two” in the Chicago _Daily Tribune_. He was the author of two novels as well as _A Line-o’-Verse or Two_ (1911) and _Motley Measures_ (1913), a pair of delightful light verse collections. Taylor died of pneumonia March 19, 1921. CANOPUS