Luckily the interloper runs up hill along the fence, so the delinquents are easily stopped by the whipper-in, who is lying back, and turned to the master’s horn. It may here be remarked that it is comparatively easy to stop beagles from rabbits in the open. The pack the writer has in mind would always stop if rated when a rabbit got up in an open field; but in covert, where one could not easily get at them, the case was very different, and you might holloa yourself hoarse without producing much effect. Master Bunny, however, only caused a momentary diversion, and hounds, having struck the line in the bottom corner of the fence, are once more chiming away merrily over the heather in the direction of puss’s original form. Will they catch her? Well, if she is a leveret her bolt must be nearly shot, but if she is an old hare—and she is big enough!—she will lead the pack a merry dance for another good half-hour before giving in. So is the fight fought between poor puss and her enemies the beagles. Sometimes a circle; sometimes a straight bolt and then as a rule clapping till hounds are over her, and getting up behind them, making her way home again; sometimes, though not often, making a long point and dying some five miles from home. I once recollect a hare being found close to the brook near which hounds were thrown off, as above described, making a point of five miles over the heather, and being eventually killed in the grounds of a well-known public school situated in that district. This is, however, an exceptional occurrence. Many and varied are the incidents which occur during the chase of a hare. Often have we been hopelessly at fault on that common, when, to our joy, we have beheld a hat held aloft on some neighbouring hill. We know that hat well. It belongs to the most arrant poacher in the neighbourhood; he is the best hand at seeing a hare sitting in the whole countryside, and he knows a hunted hare when he sees her. We tried at one time to reclaim him by paying him more for every hare he found for us than he could get for one dead in the public-house. No use! the instinct was far too strong, and only a week or two after the beginning of the compact “the Long ’un,” as he was called—for he was a tall fellow—was caught setting a snare one Sunday morning.