Page:A fool in spots (IA foolinspots00riveiala).pdf/113

 nothing by such delicious idling—nor, indeed, did they; for when the watching was over, the intruders shouldered their guns and left them to life. The Major's next turn was toward the big south wood, whose edge they saw fringing the top of the bluff. This bluff faces north, a sheer wall of grey-*blue limestone, seamed and broken into huge ledges. All manner of wild vines grow in the clefts, grape-vines, wild ivy, poison-oak, trail down into the water. The crown and glory of it, though, was its ferns. The trailing rock-fern runs all over the face of it, each seam and cleft is a thick fringe of maiden-hair ferns, wherever it gets good root. Foxes live in the caves along the bluffs, but the men looked with keenest search and they could not catch a glimpse of one.

Thinking of this, the Major recalled to mind a memorable and exciting chase in which they had run the fox into this very place. He had distanced them by one second, and they lost the game.

While they stood there, letting their horses drink, the Major recounted the things of interest about the hunt.

"It is such royal sport," declared Robert, "there is nothing so invigorating as a lively chase, though as a sport its palmiest days are in the past. To be a 'master of fox-hounds' was once a country