But fruitless was all his craftiness; he only rushed into a fresh foe, and tried vainly to hide or double: there was no refuge to be found anywhere, and the quick cracking of whips on every side of him told him that a war of extirpation against his whole race was on foot, so he resolved on flight, and gained the very first hillock, where he stopped for a moment, looked round to see from what direction the enemy was coming, and then made for the reeds with all his might.
"Look! the fox, the fox!" cried his pursuers, when they perceived him on the hillock: the next moment he had disappeared from it.
But they had seen enough of him to perceive that he was a splendid beast.

He was evidently an old stager, who would give the best dogs something to do.
After him! Off galloped the whole party in the track of the hounds, the faces of the two ladies were aglow with the passionate ardour of the chase, and at that instant there occurred to the mind of Fanny her vision of long ago: what if he, her nameless ideal, were now galloping beside her on his swift-footed steed, and could see her impetuously heading the chase till she threw herself down before him, and died there, without anybody knowing why! But Flora thought: "Suppose Rudolf were now to come face to face with me, and see me"-- and then she felt again how much she loved him.
And now the fox suddenly emerged again on the open.

A newly mown field, of a thousand acres or so in extent, covered with rows of haycocks, lay right before the huntsmen; and here the really interesting part of the hunt began.

The fox was a fine specimen, about as big as a young wolf, but much longer in the body, and carrying behind him a provokingly big brush.

He trotted leisurely in front, not because he could not go quicker, but because he wanted to economize his strength, and all the time he kept dodging to and fro, backwards and forwards, in the endeavour to tire his enemies out, and ceaselessly threw glances behind him at his pursuers, out of half an eye, keeping about a hundred paces in front of them, and accelerating his pace whenever he perceived that the distance between him and them was diminishing.
And yet the very best hounds of Squire John's--Cziczke, the two white ones, and Rajko, Matyi, big Ordas, Michael Kis's Fecske, and Count Gregory's Armida, to say nothing of the whole canine army behind them, were hard upon his traces.
The fox began to go slower and slower.