wn in the sunbeams like golden dust, for
this brave bird is not to be scared by winter. It is frequently covered
up by drifts, and, it is said, "sometimes plunges from on wing into the
soft snow, where it remains concealed for a day or two." I used to start
them in the open land also, where they had come out of the woods at
sunset to "bud" the wild apple trees. They will come regularly every
evening to particular trees, where the cunning sportsman lies in wait
for them, and the distant orchards next the woods suffer thus not
a little. I am glad that the partridge gets fed, at any rate. It is
Nature's own bird which lives on buds and diet drink.

In dark winter mornings, or in short winter afternoons, I sometimes
heard a pack of hounds threading all the woods with hounding cry and
yelp, unable to resist the instinct of the chase, and the note of the
hunting-horn at intervals, proving that man was in the rear. The woods
ring again, and yet no fox bursts forth on to the open level of the
pond, nor following pack pursuing their Actaeon. And perhaps at evening
I see the hunters returning with a single brush trailing from their
sleigh for a trophy, seeking their inn. They tell me that if the fox
would remain in the bosom of the frozen earth he would be safe, or if he
would run in a straight line away no foxhound could overtake him; but,
having left his pursuers far behind, he stops to rest and listen till
they come up, and when he runs he circles round to his old haunts, where
the hunters await him. Sometimes, however, he will run upon a wall many
rods, and then leap off far to one side, and he appears to know that
water will not retain his scent. A hunter told me that he once saw a fox
pursued by hounds burst out on to Walden when the ice was covered with
shallow puddles, run part way across, and then return to the same shore.
Ere long the hounds arrived, but here they lost the scent. Sometimes
a pack hunting by themselves would pass my door, and circle round my
house, and yelp and hound without regarding me, as if afflicted by a
species of madness, so that nothing could divert them from the pursuit.
Thus they circle until they fall upon the recent trail of a fox, for a
wise hound will forsake everything else for this. One day a man came
to my hut from Lexington to inquire after his hound that made a large
track, and had been hunting for a week by himself. But I fear that he
was not the wiser for all I told him, for every tim