any business I am reluctant to give it up. I began to set an
extravagant value on the capture of the small hen. All the abstract
desire for fame which had filled my mind five minutes before was
concentrated now on that one feat. In a calmer moment I might have
realized that one bird more or less would not make a great deal of
difference to the fortunes of the chicken farm, but now my power of
logical reasoning had left me. All our fortunes seemed to me to center
in the hen, now half a field in front of me.

We had been traveling downhill all this time, but at this point we
crossed the road and the ground began to rise. I was in that painful
condition which occurs when one has lost one's first wind and has not
yet got one's second. I was hotter than I had ever been in my life.

Whether the hen, too, was beginning to feel the effects of its run I
do not know, but it slowed down to a walk, and even began to peck in a
tentative manner at the grass. This assumption on its part that the
chase was at an end irritated me. I felt that I should not be worthy
of the name of Englishman if I allowed myself to be treated as a
cipher by a mere bird. It should realize yet that it was no light
matter to be pursued by J. Garnet, author of "The Maneuvers of
Arthur," etc.

A judicious increase of pace brought me within a yard or two of my
quarry. But it darted from me with a startled exclamation and moved
off rapidly up the hill. I followed, distressed. The pace was proving
too much for me. The sun blazed down. It seemed to concentrate its
rays on my back, to the exclusion of the surrounding scenery, in much
the same way as the moon behaves to the heroine of a melodrama. A
student of the drama has put it on record that he has seen the moon
follow the heroine round the stage, and go off with her (left). The
sun was just as attentive to me.

We were on level ground now. The hen had again slowed to a walk, and I
was capable of no better pace. Very gradually I closed in on it. There
was a high boxwood hedge in front of us. Just as I came close enough
to stake my all on a single grab, the hen dived into this and
struggled through in the mysterious way in which birds do get through
hedges.

I was in the middle of the obstacle, very hot, tired, and dirty, when
from the other side I heard a sudden shout of "Mark over! Bird to the
right!" and the next moment I found myself emerging, with a black face
and tottering knees, on to the gravel pa