silent over their great anguish and grief, cheering
the helpless and comforting and succoring the sick and wounded. It was
a mystery to me then, and it is a mystery to me now.

About the first of November the writer hereof received a long-expected
letter from Tom Tunison, the secretary of the club, who was on a visit
to Monticello. It was brief and breezy.

"Young man," he wrote, "they are coming. They are going to give us a
[v]ruffle. Their dogs are good, but they lack form and finish as well as
discipline--plenty of bottom but no confidence. I haven't hesitated to
put up our horn as the prize. Get the boys together and tell them about
it, and see that our own eleven are in fighting trim. You won't believe
it, but Sue, Herndon, Kate, and Walthall are coming with the party; and
the fair de Compton, who set all the Monticello boys wild last year when
she got back from Macon, vows and declares she is coming, too. Remember
the 15th. Be prepared."

I took in the situation at a glance. Tom, in his reckless style, had
bantered a party of Jasper county men as to the superiority of their
dogs, and had even offered to give them an opportunity to gain the
silver-mounted horn won by the Rockville club in Hancock county the year
before. The Jasper county men, who were really breeding some excellent
dogs, accepted the challenge, and Tom had invited them to share the
hospitality of the plantation home called "Bachelors' Hall."

If the truth must be confessed, I was not at all grieved at the
announcement in Tom's letter, apart from the agreeable change in the
social atmosphere that would result from the presence of ladies in
"Bachelors' Hall." I was eagerly anxious to test the mettle of a
favorite hound--Flora--whose care and training had cost me a great deal
of time and trouble. Although it was her first season in the field, she
had already become the pet and pride of the Rockville club, the members
of which were not slow to sound her praises. Flora was an experiment.
She was the result of a cross between the Henry hound (called in Georgia
the "Birdsong dog," in honor of the most successful breeder) and a
Maryland hound. She was a grand-daughter of the famous Hodo and in
everything except her color (she was white with yellow ears) was the
exact reproduction of that magnificent fox-hound. I was anxious to see
her put to the test.

It was with no small degree of satisfaction, therefore, that I informed
Aunt Patience, the cook, of