THE REV. JOHN RUSSELL. 261 



as unlikely to tell an untruth as your lordship ; ' 

 a rejoinder that brought the conversation to an 

 abrupt close. 



"Years afterwards I repeated to Russell 

 what Lord Henrv had said ; on which he 

 replied, ' I onlv wish I had been there ; I 

 could have told his lordship that a very similar 

 circumstance happened to myself (that of the 

 charcoal-burner's little speckletv hen), and I 

 think lie would have been the bold man, had 

 he doubted that fact.' " 



Russell's thoughts must have carried him 

 back, at that instant, to the time when he 

 blacked Bulteel's eye at Plympton School ; or, 

 later on, perhaps, to those davs of muscular 

 Christianitv at Oxford, when, if anv one had 

 been rash enough to doubt his word, or that of 

 his friend Denne, either of them would have 

 knocked him down like a ninepin on a skittle- 

 alley. Still, it must be owned that antics like 

 these by foxes, when hunted, are most excep- 

 tional ; two or three only having been witnessed 

 once, during each of their lives, by men of such 

 long and varied experience as Mr. King and 

 the subject of this memoir. 



Another incident is equally remarkable : — 

 " During a Chulmleigh meeting," said Russell, 

 " I was enjoying a day's sport with Sir Walter 

 Carew's hounds. They found — I forget exactly 

 where — and were running him sharply near 



