Stand still, old
woman! Do you think still, after fifteen winters, that you can catch
a fox?
A fox it is indeed; a great dog-fox, as red as the fir-stems between
which he glides. And yet his legs are black with fresh peat-stains.
He is a hunted fox: but he has not been up long.
The mare stands like a statue: but I can feel her trembling between
my knees. Positively he does not see us. He sits down in the middle
of a ride, turns his great ears right and left, and then scratches
one of them with his hind foot, seemingly to make it hear the better.
Now he is up again and on.
Beneath yon firs, some hundred yards away, standeth, or rather lieth,
for it is on dead flat ground, the famous castle of Malepartus, which
beheld the base murder of Lampe the hare, and many a seely soul
beside. I know it well; a patch of sand-heaps, mingled with great
holes, amid the twining fir-roots; ancient home of the last of the
wild beasts. And thither, unto Malepartus safe and strong, trots
Reinecke, where he hopes to be snug among the labyrinthine windings,
and innumerable starting-holes, as the old apologue has it, of his
ballium, covert-way, and donjon keep.
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