With Hounds. 155 



and ever have been, beyond all doubt, going up to 

 their fox in any earth, facing him alternately with hard 

 words and harder nibs, until at length he is forced to 

 quit his stronghold and trust to the open for better 

 security. 



" A fox thus bolted is rarely a pin the worse for the 

 skirmish ; he has had fair play given him, and instead of 

 being half strangled is fit to flee for his life. The hounds, 

 too, have their chance, and the field are not baulked of 

 their expected run. 



" Russell's country was technically known as a hollow 

 one that is, a country in which rocky fastnesses and earths 

 excavated by badgers abound in every direction. Conse- 

 quently, on every hunting day, a terrier or two invariably 

 accompanied him to the field, and certainly no general ever 

 depended with more trust on the services of an aide-de- 

 camp than he on those of his terriers. If in chase they 

 could not always live with the pack, still they stuck to the 

 line, and were sure to be there or thereabouts \vhen they 

 were wanted if the hounds threw up even for a minute. 



" ' I like them to throw their tongue freely when face to 

 face with their enemy,' said Russell, one day, as he stood 

 listening to his famous dog Tip marking energetically in a 

 long drain some six feet below the surface ; ' you know 

 then where they are and what they're about.' 



" Entered early, and only at fox, Russell's terriers were 

 as steady from riot as the staunchest of his hounds, so 

 that running together with them, and never passing over 

 an earth without drawing it, they gave a fox, whether 

 above ground or below it, but a poor chance of not being 

 found by one or the other. A squeak from a terrier was 

 the sure signal of a find, and there was not a hound in the 



