The rain had turned to a thick mist; the hounds sat on the soaked grass in solemn and disconsolate patience, looking as sapient and as silly as only hounds can; the crowd of country boys remained as indifferent to the weather as if it had been a summer breeze; and after what seemed to the shivering riders a long delay, the emissary returned, breathless, with the grand dog slinking at his bare heels. The yellow cur was withdrawn by the tail from the lower end of the drain, and the terrier was rammed in like a charge into a gun, its owner, a very respectable elderly man, lying flat on his face in the mud, with his head in the drain, bellowing encouragement. Faint squeaks from the bowels of the earth soon testified that the combat had begun, and the owner redoubled his bawls of “Good boy! good lad!” At this moment a shout arose from the road above that “the flood was loosed,” in other words, that the artificers of the dam had lost patience, and had turned the pent-up waters of the stream once more into the drain. Dinny Hegarty arose from the lower end to protest, but he was too late. There was a chorus of shouts, “The dog’ll be shoked”--“The two o’ thim’ll be shoked”--“There isn’t as much wather as’d shoke them”--“Faith, the divil himself’d be shoked in it!” What were the experiences of the sub-terranean combatants none could tell; the flood burst from the lower end of the drain and ran down the field brown with mud and redolent of fox, and the pack, without a moment’s hesitation, pursued it hotly down the field till, amidst yells of laughter, it escaped from them into a boghole. After a brief interval, muffled hostilities recommenced in the drain; two spades and a pick appeared, as if by magic, and a shaft was sunk upon the squeaks. “Give over the spades,” shouted Danny-O, as the roofing stones of “the gully” appeared, “the hands is the besht. Hurry now, before he’ll go north in it from ye!” “Arrah, what north! he haven’t room to turn in it!” “Dom yer sowl, he’d turn in a kayhole!” “Go get a briar!” roared another voice, “he isn’t two foot from the hole! Twisht it in his hair now--twisht it, can’t ye, and dhraw him out!” The principle was that adopted by dentists in extracting the nerve from a tooth, but the briar failed of its office. The spade and pick were again resorted to, and observations were taken by a small boy. “The daag have him!” “Is it by the tail?” “No, but in a throttlesome way!” “Come out now,” interposed Danny-O, “till I thry could I ketch a howlt of him.”