Frances was earlier than she thought. She turned in the road behind the master of the hounds, who, grown too stout for riding, had a nag and a buggy could race on any mountain-road. He leaned out and called back to her.
"Well, you can trot behind me," he laughed.
As they drove past the front of the house, the big gate beyond the stable-yard was flung open and the whole train, horsemen, carriages, dogs, swept out on the open rolling hillside beyond.
The master of the hounds drew off to the left.
"Leave a space there! Clear the way there! That's where the fox will be started!"
The crowd followed them to the field side.
Lawson rode up to the trap. "What are they going to do?" he asked in bewilderment.
Frances looked at him uncomprehendingly. She had been calling gay badinage to one and another of those about her.
"Where are they going to start the fox? Don't you let the dogs--"
"Oh!" with a long intonation of comprehension, "why, we've got the fox with us; first catch your fox, you know--"
"Why, Mr. Payne has him. Every boy in the county knows he will pay a big price for a fox. They have their traps out and when they catch one they bring it in to him, and then--" a comprehensive wave of her hand finished the sentence.
"The dogs--" began Lawson, still unenlightened.
"Oh they put the dogs up in the stables, don't you see? Watch them!" she turned in the trap seat and Lawson wheeled his horse.
A boy stood guard at the stable door. One by one their masters were coaxing and coercing the dogs inside. Their calls echoed all over the field. "Here, Dixie!" "Here, Duke!" and now and then an impatient master wound his horn to call his dogs to his feet, whereat every dog inside the big echoing stable went fairly mad with barking.
"H-e-r-e, M-u-s-i-c!" "H-e-r-e, S-a-l!" Two frisky dogs were careering down the hillside, their masters in wild pursuit.
"There they go, the two worst dogs in the county!" cried Frances impatiently.
"And the two best hunters, once they are started!" declared Mr. Payne.
Lawson, tired of the dogs' antics, turned his attention to the scene about him. The hill rolled from where they waited down to a wide stream at its foot. It was waste land, and the long grasses were deeply green or purple with seed-pods or browned with sering weeds; down by the stream was a tangle, scarlet and yellow leaved, and gray and purple-stemmed, a tangle of sumach and blackberry and bramble; and beyond, on the climbing land, was the great forest where the pine showed vivid green and the chestnut flared like gold in the sunshine gilding the hillside and pricking out all its colorings--the oaks' persistent russet, the changing hues of the tangled undergrowth.