the river in a great semicircle, and poor Redcoat saw his only way of escape cut off, and in his desperation he ran out on a point of land that jutted well out into the river. There he stood panting and trembling, watching the oncoming hounds and the horsemen. They were too close upon him and too near together to try to break through their ranks, so he stood watching, impotent and fascinated by the danger that menaced him. When the hounds were a hundred feet away and the men two hundred, Redcoat remembered the river behind him. In times past it had often been his friend. Several times he had crossed on the thin ice where hounds could not follow, but there was no ice now; only a turbulent dark flood, foam flecked, and angry with the spring rains. If he had been fresh he might have swum the river under these conditions, but spent as he was the water did not look as terrible to him as did the horsemen and the hounds, so he whirled and plunged bravely into the river, while the pack swept down and out upon the point to see the fox fifty
