e the dogs running all day on empty stomachs, Lyoff
Nikolaievich," she grunted, going angrily to put on the dogs' collars.

At last the dogs were got together, some of them on leashes, others
running free; and we would ride out at a brisk trot past Bitter Wells
and the grove into the open country.

My father would give the word of command, "Line out!" and point out the
direction in which we were to go, and we spread out over the stubble
fields and meadows, whistling and winding about along the lee side of
the steep balks, [8] beating all the bushes with our hunting-crops, and
gazing keenly at every spot or mark on the earth.

Something white would appear ahead. We stared hard at it, gathered
up the reins, examined the leash, scarcely believing the good luck of
having come on a hare at last. Then riding up closer and closer, with
our eyes on the white thing, it would turn out to be not a hare at all,
but a horse's skull. How annoying!

We would look at papa and Seryozha, thinking, "I wonder if they saw that
I took that skull for a hare." But papa would be sitting keen and alert
on his English saddle, with the wooden stirrups, smoking a cigarette,
while Seryozha would perhaps have got his leash entangled and could not
get it straight.

"Thank heaven!" we would exclaim, "nobody saw me! What a fool I should
have felt!" So we would ride on.

The horse's even pace would begin to rock us to sleep, feeling rather
bored at nothing getting up; when all of a sudden, just at the moment we
least expected it, right in front of us, twenty paces away, would jump
up a gray hare as if from the bowels of the earth.

The dogs had seen it before we had, and had started forward already
in full pursuit. We began to bawl, "Tally-ho! tally-ho!" like madmen,
flogging our horses with all our might, and flying after them.

The dogs would come up with the hare, turn it, then turn it again, the
young and fiery Sultan and Darling running over it, catching up again,
and running over again; and at last the old and experienced Winger,
who had been galloping on one side all the time, would seize her
opportunity, and spring in. The hare would give a helpless cry like a
baby, and the dogs, burying their fangs in it, in a star-shaped group,
would begin to tug in different directions.

"Let go! Let go!"

We would come galloping up, finish off the hare, and give the dogs
the tracks, [9] tearing them off toe by toe, and throwing them to our
favorit