He ran like a stag to the wood's north corner, Where the hedge was thick and the ditch a yawner, But the scarlet glimpse of Myngs on Turk, Watching the woodside, made him shirk. He ringed the wood and looked at the south. What wind there was blew into his mouth. But close to the woodland's blackthorn thicket Was Dansey, still as a stone, on picket. At Dansey's back were a twenty more Watching the cover and pressing fore. [Illustration: The fox drew in] The fox drew in and flaired with his muzzle. Death was there if he messed the puzzle. There were men without and hounds within, A crying that stiffened the hair on skin, Teeth in cover and death without, Both deaths coming, and no way out. FOUND His nose ranged swiftly, his heart beat fast, Then a crashing cry rose up in a blast, Then horse hooves trampled, then horses' flitches Burst their way through the hazel switches, Then the horn again made the hounds like mad, And a man, quite near, said "Found, by Gad," And a man, quite near, said "Now he'll break. Lark's Leybourne Copse is the line he'll take." And the men moved up with their talk and stink And the traplike noise of the horseshoe clink. Men whose coming meant death from teeth In a worrying wrench with him beneath. The fox sneaked down by the cover side, (With his ears flexed back) as a snake would glide, He took the ditch at the cover-end, He hugged the ditch as his only friend. The blackbird cock with the golden beak Got out of his way with a jabbering shriek, And the shriek told Tom on the raking bay That for eighteen pence he was gone away. [Illustration: The blackbird got out of his way with a jabbering shriek] He ran in the hedge in the triple growth Of bramble and hawthorn, glad of both, Till a couple of fields were past, and then Came the living death of the dread of men. Then, as he listened, he heard a "Hoy," Tom Dansey's horn and "Awa-wa-woy." Then all hounds crying with all their forces, Then a thundering down of seventy horses. Robin Dawe's horn and halloos of "Hey Hark Hollar, Hoik" and "Gone away," "Hark Hollar Hoik," and the smack of a whip, A yelp as a tail hound caught the clip. "Hark Hollar, Hark Hollar"; then Robin made Pip go crash through the cut-and-laid, Hounds were over and on his line With a head like bees upon Tipple Tine. The sound of the nearness sent a flood Of terror of death through the fox's blood. He upped his brush and he cocked his nose, And he went up wind as a racer goes. AWAY [Illustration: The hounds went romping with delight]