Tales of Wonder | Page 3

were gathered before it in great easeful chairs, and the wild
weather outside and the comfort that was within, and the season of the year--for it was
Christmas--and the hour of the night, all called for the weird or uncanny, then out spoke
the ex-master of foxhounds and told this tale.
I once had an odd experience too. It was when I had the Bromley and Sydenham, the year
I gave them up--as a matter of fact it was the last day of the season. It was no use going
on because there were no foxes left in the county, and London was sweeping down on us.
You could see it from the kennels all along the skyline like a terrible army in grey, and
masses of villas every year came skirmishing down our valleys. Our coverts were mostly
on the hills, and as the town came down upon the valleys the foxes used to leave them
and go right away out of the county and they never returned. I think they went by night
and moved great distances. Well it was early April and we had drawn blank all day, and
at the last draw of all, the very last of the season, we found a fox. He left the covert with
his back to London and its railways and villas and wire and slipped away towards the
chalk country and open Kent. I felt as I once felt as a child on one summer's day when I
found a door in a garden where I played left luckily ajar, and I pushed it open and the
wide lands were before me and waving fields of corn.
We settled down into a steady gallop and the fields began to drift by under us, and a great
wind arose full of fresh breath. We left the clay lands where the bracken grows and came
to a valley at the edge of the chalk. As we went down into it we saw the fox go up the
other side like a shadow that crosses the evening, and glide into a wood that stood on the
top. We saw a flash of primroses in the wood and we were out the other side, hounds
hunting perfectly and the fox still going absolutely straight. It began to dawn on me then
that we were in for a great hunt, I took a deep breath when I thought of it; the taste of the
air of that perfect Spring afternoon as it came to one galloping, and the thought of a great
run, were together like some old rare wine. Our faces now were to another valley, large
fields led down to it, with easy hedges, at the bottom of it a bright blue stream went
singing and a rambling village smoked, the sunlight on the opposite slopes danced like a
fairy; and all along the top old woods were frowning, but they dreamed of Spring. The
"field" had fallen of and were far behind and my only human companion was James, my
old first whip, who had a hound's instinct, and a personal animosity against a fox that
even embittered his speech.
Across the valley the fox went as straight as a railway line, and again we went without a
check straight through the woods at the top. I remember hearing men sing or shout as
they walked home from work, and sometimes children whistled; the sounds came up
from the village to the woods at the top of the valley. After that we saw no more villages,
but valley after valley arose and fell before us as though we were voyaging some strange
and stormy sea, and all the way before us the fox went dead up-wind like the fabulous
Flying Dutchman. There was no one in sight now but my first whip and me, we had both
of us got on to our second horses as we drew the last covert.
Two or three times we checked in those great lonely valleys beyond the village, but I
began to have inspirations, I felt a strange certainty within me that this fox was going on
straight up-wind till he died or until night came and we could hunt no longer, so I
reversed ordinary methods and only cast straight ahead and always we picked up the
scent again at once. I believe that this fox was the last one left in the villa-haunted lands

and that he was prepared to leave them for remote uplands far from men, that if we had
come the following day he would not have been there, and that we just happened to hit
off his journey.
Evening began to descend upon the valleys, still the hounds drifted on, like the lazy but
unresting shadows of clouds upon