But in truth Andy cared little so that he could run--run hard, fast, and long. His powerful body craved work, work, and work yet more abundantly. His way of indulging it was to call on it for all its energies; he exulted in feeling its brave response. Fatigue he never knew--at least not till he had changed and bathed; and then it was not real fatigue: it was no more than satiety. Now when they had found--and they had the luck to find directly--he revelled in the heavy going of a big ploughed field. He was at the game he loved. Yes, but the pace was good--distinctly good. The spirit was willing, but human legs are but human, and only two in number. Craft was required. The fox ran straight now--but had he never a thought in his mind? The field streamed off to the right, lengthening out as it went. Andy bore to his left: he remembered Croxton's Dip. Did the fox? That was the question. If he did, the hunt would describe the two sides of a triangle, while Andy cut across the base. He was out of sight of the field now, but he could hear the hounds giving tongue from time to time and the thud of the hoofs. The sounds grew nearer! A thrill of triumph ran through him; his old-time knowledge had not failed him. The fox had doubled back, making for Croxton's Dip. Over the edge of yonder hill it lay, half a mile off--a deep depression in the ground, covered with thick undergrowth. In the hope of catching up, Andy Hayes felt that he could run all day and grudge the falling of an over-hasty night. "Blown," indeed, but no more than a rest of a minute would put right, he reached the ledge whence the ground sloped down sharply to the Dip. He was in time to see the hunt race past him along the bottom--leaders, the ruck, stragglers. Jack Rock and Wellgood were with the Master in the van; he could not make out Harry Belfield; a forlorn figure looking like the Bird laboured far in the rear. They swept into the Dip as Andy started to race down the slope. But to his chagrin they swept out of it again, straight up a long slope which rose on his left, the fox running game, a near kill promising, a fast point-to-point secured. The going was too good for shanks' mare to-day. Before he got to the bottom even the Bird had galloped by, walloping his showy screw. To the left, then, and up that long slope! There was nothing else for it, if he were so much as to see the kill from afar. This was exercise, if you like! His heart throbbed like the engines of a great ship; the sweat broke out on him. Oh, it was fine! That slope must be won--then Heaven should send the issue! Suddenly--even as he braced himself to face the long ascent, as the last sounds from the hunt died away over its summit--he saw a derelict, and, amazed, came to a full stop.