over
of some dark little bay, and you get home too late for a morning nap
and too early for the breakfast, which you have been longing after for
the last two hours. Then, too, your horse has lost his night's rest,
and will be jaded for two days in consequence. No: the time to throw
the dogs off for a fox-hunt is that weird hour which the negroes
significantly call "gray-day:" it is the surest time to strike a
trail, and by the time Reynard begins to dodge and double there will
be plenty of light to ride by and to get a good view. If the fox gets
away or the cover is drawn without a find, you are always sure of
having your spirits raised by the cheerful sunrise: by the time you
get home, tired and spattered, the ladies are down stairs ready to
make pretty exclamations over the brush or to chaff you pleasantly
for your want of success; and then there is just time to get your hair
brushed and your clothes changed before the mingled aromas of fried
sausage and old Java put the keen edge on your already whetted
appetite.

A ride across country after a rattling pack of English hounds on
a thoroughbred hunter with a field of red-coated squires is an
experience which few hunters on this side of the water have ever
enjoyed, but with the incidents of which every reader of English
novels is familiar. The chase of the red fox in Maryland or Virginia
has some features in common with the British national sport, but that
of the gray fox in the more southern States differs materially from
both. The latter animal is smaller and possessed of less speed and
endurance than his more northern brother, but he is far more common
and quite as cunning. He makes shorter runs, but over very different
ground, always keeping in the woods and dodging about like a rabbit,
so that a different style of horse and a different method of riding
are required for his capture. There is no risk of breaking your neck
over a five-barred gate or a stone wall, but you may be hung in a
grapevine, or knocked out of the saddle by a low limb, or have your
knee scraped against a tree-trunk. It is true you may catch your fox
in twenty minutes, and three hours is an extraordinary run, but then
you may catch four or five between daylight and ten o'clock of an
autumn morning.

The horses stretch their necks toward the stables and whinny as they
think of the bundles of untasted fodder: the dogs require no notes
of the horn to rouse them, for they know the signs and are al