Before them lay the high and ridgy head of Round Top, his flanks sloping toward them, in two broad pine-clad knobs, with a wild streamlet brawling down between them, and a thick tangled swamp of small extent, but full of tall dense thornbushes, matted with vines and cat-briers, and carpeted with a rich undergrowth of fern and wintergreen, and whortleberries. To the right and left of the two knobs or spurs just mentioned, were two other deep gorges, or dry channels, bare of brushwood, and stony--rockwalled, with steep precipitous ledges toward the mountain, but sloping easily up to the lower ridges. As they reached the first of these, Tom motioned Forester to stop. "Stand here," he whispered, "close in here, jest behind this here crag-- and look out hereaways toward the village. If he comes down this runway, kill him, but mind you doosn't show a hair out of this corner; for Archer, he'll stand next, and if so be he crosses from the swamp hole hereaways, you'll chance to get a bullet. Be still, now, as a mouse, and tie your horse here in the cove!--Now, lads" And off he set again, rounded the knob, and making one slight motion toward the nook, wherein he wished that Harry should keep guard, wheeled back in utter silence, and very slowly--for they were close to the spot wherein, as they supposed, the object of their chase was laid up; and as yet but two of his paths were guarded toward the plain; Jem and his comrades having long since got with the hounds into his rear, and waiting only for the rising of the sun to lay them on, and push along the channel of the brook. This would compel him to break covert, either directly from the swamp, or by one of the dry gorges mentioned. Now, therefore, was the crisis of the whole matter; for if--before the other passes were made good--the stag should take alarm, he might steal off without affording a chance of a shot, and get into the mountains to the right, where they might hunt him for a week in vain. No marble statue could stand more silently or still than Harry and his favorite gray, who, with erected ears and watchful eye, trembling a little with excitement, seemed to know what he was about, and to enjoy it no less keenly than his rider. Tom and the Commodore, quickening their pace as they got out of ear-shot, retraced their steps quite back to the turnpike road, along which Harry saw them gallop furiously, in a few minutes, and turn up, half a mile off, toward the further gulley--he saw no more, however; though he felt certain that the Commodore was, scarce ten minutes after he lost sight of them, standing within twelve paces of him, at the further angle of the swamp--Tom having warily determined that the two single guns should take post together, while the two doubles should be placed where the wild quarry could get off encountering but a single sportsman.