Close over me is the long
fir-fringed ride of Easthampstead, ending suddenly in Caesar's camp;
and hounds and huntsmen are already far ahead, and racing up the
Roman road, which the clods of these parts, unable to give a better
account of it, call the Devil's Highway.
Racing indeed; for as Reinecke gallops up the narrow heather-fringed
pathway, he brushes off his scent upon the twigs at every stride; and
the hounds race after him, showing no head indeed, and keeping, for
convenience, in one long line upon the track: but going heads up,
sterns down, at a pace which no horse can follow.--I only hope they
may not overrun the scent.
They have overrun it; halt, and put their heads down a moment. But
with one swift cast in fall gallop they have hit it off again, fifty
yards away in the heather, long ere the horsemen are up to them; for
those hounds can hunt a fox because they are not hunted themselves,
and so have learnt to trust themselves, and act for themselves; as
boys should learn at school, even at the risk of a mistake or two.
Now they are showing head indeed, down a half-cleared valley, and
over a few ineffectual turnips withering in the peat, a patch of
growing civilization in the heart of the wilderness; and then over
the brook, while I turn slowly away, through a green wilderness of
self-sown firs.
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