There was a game hound of the pack--a grey old hound that, like the huntsman, was a keener fox-hunter than loyalist; and, through all this uproar and confusion, through the dismayed silence that followed, he had been nosing up and down the pastures, finding a weak scent here, a false trail there. And now, on the sudden, he lifted his grey head, and his note was like a bugle-call. The younger hounds scampered out from among the hoofs that had been playing dangerously near them and gave full tongue as they swung down the pastures. Sir Jasper spurred forward. “Here’s an omen, friends,” he cried. “The hunt is up in earnest. We shall kill, I tell you! we shall kill!” It was a run that afterwards, when the fires of war died down and all Lancashire was hunting once again in peace, was talked of beside cottage hearths, on market-days when squires and yeomen met for barter--was talked of wherever keen, lusty men foregathered for the day’s business and for gossip of the gallant yesterdays. Sir Jasper led, with Squire Demaine close at his heels. It seemed, indeed, the day of older folk; for away in front of them, where the sterns of eager hounds waved like a frantic sea, it was Pincher--grey, hefty, wise in long experience--that kept the running. Prince Charles Edward was forgotten, though he had need of these gentlemen on the morrow. After all, with slighter excuse, they might any one of them break their necks to-day in pursuit of the lithe red fox that showed like a running splash of colour far ahead. The day was enough for them, with its rollicking hazards, its sense of sheer pace and well-being. Down Littlemead Ings the fox led them, and up the hill that bordered Strongstones Coppice. He sought cover in the wood, but Pincher, with a buoyant, eager yell, dislodged him; and for seven miles, fair or foul going, they followed that racing blotch of red. There were fewer horsemen now, but most of them kept pace, galloping hard behind Sir Jasper and the Squire, who were riding neck for neck. The fox, as it happened, was in his own country again, after a sojourn he regretted in alien pastures; and he headed straight for the barren lands of rock and scanty herbage that lay up the slopes of Rother Hill. The going was steep and slippery, the scent cold, because snow was lying on these upper lands; and the fox, who knew all this a little better than Pincher, plunged through a snowdrift that hid the opening of his favourite cave and knew himself secure. They could dig him out from a burrow, but this cave was long and winding, and all its quiet retreats were known to him.