nt of brown ale; and in he jumped and ran
down, splashing himself all over. Before he had gone down it fifty
yards he felt so much refreshed that he quite plucked up heart, so he
followed the water till it joined a far bigger stream, crossed the
larger stream, climbed up almost to the top of the opposite side of
the combe, and lay down.

And when he had lain there for more than an hour he saw Aunt Yeld
coming down to the water two or three hundred yards above the place
where he lay, with her neck bowed and her grey body black with sweat,
looking piteously tired and weak. She jumped straight into the flooded
water and came plunging down; and only a few minutes behind her came
the hounds. The moment that they reached the water some of them leaped
in and swam to the other side, and they came bounding down both banks,
searching diligently as they ran. Then he saw Aunt Yeld stop in a deep
pool, and sink her whole body under the water, leaving nothing but her
head above it. She had chosen her place cunningly, where the bank was
hollowed out and the water was overhung by a little thorn bush that
almost hid her head from view. And he watched the hounds try down and
down; and he now saw that two horsemen were coming down the combe's
side after them, the men bending low over their saddles, hardly able
to face the gale, and the horses with staring eyes and heaving flanks,
almost as much distressed as Aunt Yeld herself. The men seemed to be
encouraging the hounds, though in the howling of the wind he could
hear nothing.

But the pack tried down and down by themselves, till at last they came
to the place where Aunt Yeld was lying; and there two of them stopped
as if puzzled; but she only sank her head a little deeper in the water
and lay as still as death, with her ears pressed back tight upon her
neck. Then at last the hounds passed on, though they were loth to
leave the spot, and followed the bank down below her. But presently
the Calf became aware, to his terror, that some of them were pausing
at the place where he himself had left the water, and, what was more,
were unwilling to leave it. And then a great black and tan hound
carried the line very, very slowly a few yards away from the bank up
the side of the combe, and said, "Ough!" and the hounds on the
opposite side of the stream no sooner heard him than they jumped in
and swam across to him; so that in half a minute every one of them was
working slowly up towards his hiding