* * * * * At eleven o’clock a boy went past, With a rough-haired terrier following fast. The boy’s sweet whistle and dog’s quick yap Woke the fox from out of his nap. * * * * * He rose and stretched till the claws in his pads Stuck hornily out like long black gads. He listened a while, and his nose went round To catch the smell of the distant sound. * * * * * The windward smells came free from taint-- They were rabbit, strongly, with lime-kiln, faint, A wild-duck, likely, at Sars Holt Pond, And sheep on the Sars Holt Down beyond. * * * * * The leeward smells were much less certain, For the Ghost Heath Hill was like a curtain, Yet vague, from the leeward, now and then, Came muffled sounds like the sound of men. * * * * * He moved to his right to a clearer space, And all his soul came into his face, Into his eyes and into his nose, As over the hill a murmur rose. His ears were cocked and his keen nose flaired, He sneered with his lips till his teeth were bared, He trotted right and lifted a pad Trying to test what foes he had. * * * * * On Ghost Heath turf was a steady drumming Which sounded like horses quickly coming, It died as the hunt went down the dip, Then Malapert yelped at Myngs’s whip. A bright iron horseshoe clinkt on stone, Then a man’s voice spoke, not one alone, Then a burst of laughter, swiftly still, Muffled away by Ghost Heath Hill. Then, indistinctly, the clop, clip, clep, On Brady Ride, of a horse’s step. Then silence, then, in a burst, much clearer, Voices and horses coming nearer, And another noise, of a pit-pat beat On the Ghost Hill grass, of foxhound feet. * * * * * He sat on his haunches listening hard, While his mind went over the compass card. Men were coming and rest was done, But he still had time to get fit to run; He could outlast horse and outrace hound, But men were devils from Lobs’s Pound. Scent was burning, the going good, The world one lust for a fox’s blood, The main earths stopped and the drains put to, And fifteen miles to the land he knew. But of all the ills, the ill least pleasant Was to run in the light when men were present Men in the fields to shout and sign For a lift of hounds to a fox’s line. Men at the earth, at the long point’s end, Men at each check and none his friend, Guessing each shift that a fox contrives; But still, needs must when the devil drives. * * * * *