e I attempted to
answer his questions he interrupted me by asking, "What do you do here?"
He had lost a dog, but found a man.

One old hunter who has a dry tongue, who used to come to bathe in Walden
once every year when the water was warmest, and at such times looked in
upon me, told me that many years ago he took his gun one afternoon and
went out for a cruise in Walden Wood; and as he walked the Wayland road
he heard the cry of hounds approaching, and ere long a fox leaped the
wall into the road, and as quick as thought leaped the other wall out of
the road, and his swift bullet had not touched him. Some way behind came
an old hound and her three pups in full pursuit, hunting on their own
account, and disappeared again in the woods. Late in the afternoon, as
he was resting in the thick woods south of Walden, he heard the voice
of the hounds far over toward Fair Haven still pursuing the fox; and
on they came, their hounding cry which made all the woods ring sounding
nearer and nearer, now from Well Meadow, now from the Baker Farm. For
a long time he stood still and listened to their music, so sweet to
a hunter's ear, when suddenly the fox appeared, threading the solemn
aisles with an easy coursing pace, whose sound was concealed by a
sympathetic rustle of the leaves, swift and still, keeping the round,
leaving his pursuers far behind; and, leaping upon a rock amid the
woods, he sat erect and listening, with his back to the hunter. For
a moment compassion restrained the latter's arm; but that was a
short-lived mood, and as quick as thought can follow thought his piece
was levelled, and whang!--the fox, rolling over the rock, lay dead on
the ground. The hunter still kept his place and listened to the hounds.
Still on they came, and now the near woods resounded through all their
aisles with their demoniac cry. At length the old hound burst into view
with muzzle to the ground, and snapping the air as if possessed, and ran
directly to the rock; but, spying the dead fox, she suddenly ceased her
hounding as if struck dumb with amazement, and walked round and round
him in silence; and one by one her pups arrived, and, like their mother,
were sobered into silence by the mystery. Then the hunter came forward
and stood in their midst, and the mystery was solved. They waited in
silence while he skinned the fox, then followed the brush a while, and
at length turned off into the woods again. That evening a Weston squire
came to the