not even tried to place himself. But
as the hounds ran on, south and west, he began to recognise familiar
features. Away there to the south, surely were the trees of
Coppinger's Court; could it be the Mount Music earths for which the
fox was heading? The hounds were running now down hill, through crisp,
upland meadows. Farmhouses began to reappear, thatched and
whitewashed, tucked snugly in among low bunches of trees; fences were
changing in character; the amber streams ran less fiercely, and found
time to loiter in pools and quiet reaches. The hounds had begun to
hunt more slowly, and Larry looked at his watch.

"Forty-five minutes since they left the glen! Bill's just about mad
enough for the asylum by this time!" he thought "If we could only
catch this lad!"

But this particular "lad" was not to gratify young Mr. Coppinger by
dying, classically, in the open, "on the top of the ground." Five
minutes after Larry had taken the time he took it again, this time at
the mouth of one of many holes in a sandpit, wherein, as was announced
by a country boy, "the lad" had saved himself, with "the dogs snapping
at his tail."

"He earned it well," said Larry, ungrudgingly, even though the mask
that was to have hung so carelessly from his saddle was panting deep
and safe in the sandpit, listening warily for a possible eviction
notice from the hunt-terrier (left, alas hunting rabbits in the heart
of Gloun Kieraun) thanking its own wits for the recollection of the
city of refuge.

"Ye're on the lands of Finnahy now," said the boy. "Folly on that way
down, and ye'll meet the road. That's the near way."

"Come on, you, and show it to me," said Larry.

Amazing were the ramifications of the near way. The bed of a stream
had a share, and a well-trodden path along the wide top of a bank; a
brace of wheels had to be trundled out of one gap, a toothless harrow
dragged from another. Then they were on heather again.

"Carry on now," said the guide, "and ye'll meet a pat--"

Larry needed no more leading; he was on the hill above Mount Music,
Cnocan an Ceoil Sidhe, and the "pat" that was to meet him was the
narrow track that led by the Druid Stone and the Well of the Fairies.

The December afternoon was darkening to its close; the sun had made
its farewell appearance, coming forth for a moment, a half-circle of
clear flame, above the long grey cloud that barred the head of the
valley. Larry rode past the great grey stone, and hardly