DOG-SPEARS IN COVERT. ^7, 



liiin, Mr. Conyers rode violently up to one of them 

 vociferating, " I'll kill you! I'll kill you ! pull your coat off 

 and fight directly " — much to the chagrin of his friend, the 

 diarist. 



The altercation appears to have afforded an oppor- 

 tunity for hounds to attend to business. An e.xcellent run 

 followed with an e.xasperating finish. Mr. Sheffield 

 Neave says, "We went on to within sight of Liston 

 Park, where we viewed him into the coverts, but were 

 told they were full of dog-spears, and with difficulty could 

 we stop the hounds, in doing which Cole got a fall : we 

 then saw the keeper, who told us that they were set, and 

 w^ould take him the whole day to take up, and wished 

 they were down the throat of the person who invented 

 them. I then rode round into the park and holloaed 

 the hounds into a small plantation in the middle, which 

 had none, to a view holloa, but heard immediately that 

 the fox had afterwards gone to the left into the thickest 

 of them, so told Cole to stop the hounds. We soon 

 got eight or ten people who coursed him, and in about 

 a quarter of an hour a boy caught hold of him, and 

 falling on him, secured him. Mr. Conyers then had him 

 killed on the steps of the house, hammering the paint 

 of the door with his whip, to die imminent danger of the 



