第71章

"But are you prudent, my good sir," said Brown, "not to take an hour or two's repose after receiving such severe contusions?""Confusions!" replied the farmer, laughing in derision; "Lord, Captain, naething confuses my head--I ance jumped up and laid the dogs on the fox after I had tumbled from the tap o' Christenbury Craig, and that might have confused me to purpose. Na, naething confuses me, unless it be a screed o' drink at an orra [*Occasional] time. Besides, I behooved to be round the hirsel this morning, and see how the herds were coming on--they're apt to be negligent wi' their footballs, and fairs, and trysts, when ane's away. And there I met wi' Tam o' Todshaw, and a wheen o' the rest o' the billies on the water side; they're a' for a fox-hunt this morning,--ye'll gang? I'll gie ye Dumple, and take the brood mare mysell.""But I fear I must leave you this morning, Mr. Dinmont," replied Brown.

"The fient a bit o' that," exclaimed the Borderer--"I'll no part wi'

ye at ony rate for a fortnight mair--Na, na; we dinna meet sic friends as you on a Bewcastle moss every night."Brown had not designed his journey should be a speedy one; he therefore readily compounded with this hearty invitation, by agreeing to pass a week at Charlies-hope.

On their return to the house, where the gudewife presided over an ample breakfast, she heard news of the proposed fox-hunt, not indeed with approbation, but without alarm or surprise. "Dand!

ye're the auld man yet--naething will make ye take warning till ye're brought hame some day wi' your feet foremost.""Tut, lass" answered Dandie, "ye ken yourself I am never a prin the waur [*a pin the worse.] o' my rambles."So saying, he exhorted Brown to be hasty in despatching his breakfast, as, "the frost having given way, the scent would lie this morning primely."Out they sallied accordingly for Otterscopescaurs, the farmer leading the way. They soon quitted the little valley, and involved themselves among hills as steep as they could be without being precipitous. The sides often presented gullies, down which, in the winter season, or after heavy rain, the torrents descended with great fury. Some dappled mists still floated along the peaks of the hills, the remains of the morning clouds, for the frost had broken up with a smart shower. Through these fleecy screens Were seen a hundred little temporary streamlets, or rills, descending the sides of the mountains like silver threads. By small sheep-tracks along these steeps, over which Dinmont trotted with the most fearless confidence, they at length drew near the scene of sport, and began to see other men, both on horse and foot, making toward the place of rendezvous. Brown was puzzling himself to conceive how a fox-chase could take place among hills, where it was barely possible for a pony, accustomed to the ground, to trot along, but where, quitting the track for half a yard's breadth, the rider might be either bogged, or precipitated down the bank This wonder was not diminished when he came to the place of action.

They had gradually ascended very high, and now found themselves on a mountain ridge, overhanging a glen of great depth, but extremely narrow. Here the sportsmen had collected, with an apparatus which would have shocked a member of the Pychely Hunt; for, the object being the removal of a noxious and destructive animal, as well as the pleasures of the chase, poor Reynard was allowed much less fair play than when pursued in form through an open country. The strength of his habitation, however, and the nature of the ground by which it was surrounded on all sides, supplied what was wanting in the courtesy of his pursuers. The sides of the glen were broken banks of earth, and rocks of rotten stone, which sunk sheer down to the little winding stream below, affording here and there a tuft of scathed brushwood, or a patch of furze. Along the edges of this ravine, which, as we have said, was very narrow, but of profound depth, the hunters on horse and foot ranged themselves; almost every farmer had with him; it least a, brace of large and fierce greyhounds, of the race of those deer-dogs which were formerly used in that country, but greatly lessened in size from being crossed with the common breed. The huntsman, a sort of provincial officer of the district, who receives a certain supply of meal, and a reward for every fox he destroys, was already at the bottom of the dell, whose echoes thundered to the chiding of two or three brace of fox-hounds. Terriers, including the whole generation of Pepper and Mustard, were also in attendance, having been sent forward under the care of a shepherd. Mongrel, whelp, and cur of low degree, filled up the burden of the chorus. The spectators on the brink of the ravine, or glen, held their greyhounds in leash in readiness to slip them at the fox, as soon as the activity of the party below should force him to abandon his cover.

The scene, though uncouth to the eye of a professed sportsman, had something in it wildly captivating. The shifting figures on the mountain ridge, having the sky for their background, appeared to move in the air. The dogs, impatient of their restraint, and maddened with the baying beneath, sprung here and there, and strained at the slips, which prevented them from joining their companions. Looking down, the view was equally striking. The thin mists were not totally dispersed in the glen, so that it was often through their gauzy medium that the eye strove to discover the motions of the hunters below. Sometimes a breath of wind made the scene visible, the blue rill glittering as it twined itself through its rude and solitary dell. They then could see the shepherds springing with fearless activity from one dangerous point to another, and cheering the dogs on the scent, the whole so diminished by depth and distance that they looked like pigmies.