snow and every little bush by the roadside had become glorious, while, in the words of Lowell, "every twig was ridged with pearl."
Thanksgiving morning dawned bright and beautiful, but an hour before daylight the Meadowdale Fox Club had been astir. A Bugler had gone from house to house arousing the hunters at four o'clock, so that half an hour before sunrise the club members had taken their positions and had let loose the hounds.
I do not know whether it was because it was Thanksgiving Day, a day of chicken and turkey, that Redcoat had sensed, and so had felt the chicken hunger himself, but certain it was that he had started forth that morning to secure chicken for himself and his family. He had passed around to the west end of the mountain and then descended into the valley. He had gone a mile or so to the south and had then struck off in towards the river, where there were several farmhouses with good roosts of chickens. Redcoat had dined at their expense before and he knew the lay of the land
