TheCompleteMemoirsOfGeorgeSherston

OUT direction in a maximum outburst of energy.

"Where'd ye see 5im cross, sir?" he exclaimed,
grinning at Denis with his great purple face, as he
came hustling along with a few of his hounds at his
horse's heels.

Denis indicated the exact spot; a moment later
the hounds had hit off the line, and for the next
ten or fifteen minutes I was so actively preoccupied
with my exertions in following Dixon up and down
Park Wood that my indiscretion was temporarily
obliterated. I was, in fact, so busy and flurried that
I knew nothing of what was happening except that
"our fox" was still running about inside the wood.
When he did take to the open he must have slipped
away unnoticed, for after we had emerged the hounds
feathered dubiously over a few fields and very soon I
found myself at a standstill.

Dixon was beside me, and he watched intently the
mysterious operations of Jack Pitt, who was trotting
across a ploughed field with the pack behind him,
Dixon exphtined that he was "making a cast". "He
must be a long way ahead of us; they could scarcely
speak to him after they took the line out of covert,"
"he commented.

All this was incomprehensible to me, but I was
warned by my previous blunder and confined myself
to a discreet nod. Dixon then advised me not to
wear my cap on the back of my head: I pulled the
wretched thing well down over my eyes and made a
supreme effort to look like a "hard man to hounds"....
I watched the riders who were chatting to one another
in sunlit groups; they seemed to be regarding the
proceedings of Jack Pitt with leisurely indifference.

Denis, as usual, had detached himself from his
immediate surroundings, and was keeping an alert

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