Page:Redcoat (1927).djvu/185

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the river's edge and here they could not run for more than thirty or forty rods without encountering one of the hunters at a gap in the bushes.

As ill luck would have it, the Meadowdale Fox Club had gone hunting on the west side of the river this morning. They had temporarily given up trying to capture the Phantom Fox after his two miraculous disappearances.

But, on this morning the hounds started the old rogue on the west side and for an hour he gave them a lively race, back and forth over the meadows, going in large circles, but even so the hounds cut across on him several times and he was soon hard pressed. He had seen no hunters with their thunder sticks but felt intuitively they were waiting for him in the cover close to the river. Finally, he was so hard pressed that he entered the bushes warily at the south end but he had not gone two hundred feet when his good nose told him there was danger ahead and peering out from the bushes he saw a man with the thunder stick stand-