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We used to have hunts on Saturdays, just we boys, with perhaps a black boy or two of our particular cronies; but the great hunt was “in the holidays”–that is, about Christmas. Then all the young darkies about the place were free and ready for sport.

This Christmas hunt was an event.

II

It was the year 186–, and, Christmas-day falling on a Sunday, Saturday was given as the first day of the holidays. It had been a fine Fall; the cover was good, and old hares were plentiful. It had been determined some time before Christmas that we would have a big hare-hunt on that day, and the “boys”–that is, the young darkies–came to the house from the quarters, prepared for the sport, and by the time breakfast was over they were waiting for us around the kitchen door.

Breakfast was always late about Christmas time; perhaps, the spareribs and sausages and the jelly dripping through a blanket hung over the legs of an upturned table accounted for it; and on, this Christmas eve it was ten by the tall clock in the corner of the dining-room before we were through.

When we came out, the merry darkies were waiting for us, grinning and showing their shining teeth, laughing and shouting and calling the dogs. They were not allowed to have guns; but our guns, long old single-barrels handed down for at least two generations, had been carried out and cleaned, and they were handing them around, inspecting and aiming them with as much pride as if they had been brand-new. There was only one exception to this rule: Uncle “Limpy-Jack,” so called because he had one leg shorter than the other, was allowed to have a gun. He was a sort of professional hunter about the place. No lord was ever prouder of a special privilege handed down in his family for generations.

The other boys were armed with stout sticks and made much noise. Uncle Limpy-Jack was in this respect also the only exception; he was grave as became a “man” who was a hunter by business, and “warn’t arter no foolishness.” He allowed no one to touch his gun, which thus possessed a special value. He carried his powder in a gourd and his shot in an old rag.

The pack of dogs I have described, fully recruited, were hanging around, growling and snarling, sneaking into the kitchen and being kicked out by Aunt Betty and her corps of varicolored assistants, largely augmented at the approach of Christmas with its cheer. The yelping of the mongrel pack, the shouts and whoops of the boys, and the laughter of the maids or men about the kitchen and back-yard, all in their best clothes and in high spirits, were exhilarating, and with many whoops and much “hollering,” we climbed the yard fence, and, disdaining a road, of course, set out down the hill across the field, taking long strides, each one bragging loudly of what he would do.

Let me see: there were John and Andrew and Black Peter, and Bow-legged Saul, and Milker-Tim, and Billy, and Uncle Limpy-Jack, and others now forgotten, and the three white boys. And the dogs, “Ole Rattler,” and “Ole Nim-rod,” who had always been old by their names, and were regarded with reverence akin to fetich-worship because they were popularly supposed to be able to trail a hare. It was a de-lusion, I am now satisfied; for I cannot recall that they ever trailed one certainly three feet. Then there were the “guard dawgs”: “Hector,” brindled, bob-tailed, and ugly, and “Jerry,” yellow, long-tailed, and mean; then there was “Jack,” fat, stumpy, and ill-natured; there were the two pointers, Bruno and Don, the beauties and pride of the family, with a pedigree like a prince’s, who, like us, were taking a holiday hunt, but, unlike us, without permission; “Rock,” Uncle Limpy-Jack’s “hyah dawg,” and then the two terriers “Snip” and “Snap.” We beat the banks of the spring ditch for form’s sake, though there was small chance of a hare there, because it was pasture and the banks were kept clean. Then we made for the old field beyond, the dogs spreading out and nosing around lazily, each on his own hook. Whether because of the noise we made and their seeking safety in flight, or because they were off “taking holiday”{1} as the negroes claimed, no hares were found, and after a half-hour our ardor was a little dampened. But we soon set to work in earnest and began to beat a little bottom lying between two hills, through which ran a ditch, thickly grown up with bushes and briers. The dead swamp-grass was very heavy in the narrow little bottom along the sides, and was matted in tufts. The dogs were scattered, and prowling around singly or in couples; and only one of the pointers and Snip were really on the ditch. Snip showed signs of great industry, and went bobbing backward and forward through a patch of heavy matted grass. In any other dog this might have excited suspicion, even hope. There are, however, some dogs that are natural liars. Snip was one of them. Snip’s failing was so well known that no attention was paid to him. He gave, indeed, a short bark, and bounced up two or three times like a trap-ball, looking both ways at once; but this action only called down upon him universal derision.