idge Richard drew Anne's horse, with his own,
among the trees. He left Eve to Pip. Winifred and her husband were with
David.

Far off in the distance a steady old hound gave tongue--then came the
music of the pack--the swift silent figure of the fox, straight across
the open moonlighted space in front of them.

Anne gave a little gasp. "It is old Pete," Richard murmured; "they'll
never catch him. I'll tell you about him on the way down."

So as he rode beside her after that perfect hour in which the old fox
played with the tumultuous pack, at his ease, monarch of his domain,
unmindful of silent watchers in the shadows, Richard told her of old
Pete; he told her, too, of the traditions of a ghostly fox who now and
then troubled the hounds, leading them into danger and sometimes to
death.

He went on with her to Bower's, and when he left her he handed her a
feathery bit of pine. "I picked it on the ridge," he said. "I don't know
whether you feel as I do about the scrub pines of Maryland and of
Virginia; somehow they seem to belong, as you and I do, to this country."

When Anne went to her room she stuck the bit of pine in her mirror. Then
in an uplifted mood she wrote to Uncle Rod. But she said little to him of
Richard or of Eve. Her own feelings were too mixed in the matter to
permit of analysis. But she told of the fox in the moonlight. "And the
loveliest part of it all was that nothing happened to him. I don't think
that I could have stood it to have had him killed. He was so free--and
unafraid----"

* * * * *

The next night Anne in the long front room at Bower's told Peggy and
Francois all about it. Francois' mother was sewing for Mrs. Bower, and as
the distance was great, and she could not go home at night, her small son
was sharing with her the hospitality which seemed to him rich and royal
in comparison with the economies practised in his own small home.

It was a select company which was gathered in front of the fire.
Francois and Peggy and Anne and old Mamie, with the white house cat,
Josephine, and three kittens in a basket, and Brinsley Tyson smoking his
pipe in the background.

"And the old fox went tit-upping and tit-upping along the road in the
moonlight, and Dr. Richard and I stood very still, and we saw him----"

"Last night?"

Anne nodded.

"And what did you do, Miss Anne?"

"We listened and heard the dogs----"

Little Francois clasped his hands. "Oh, were