254 FOXES V. GAME. [PART II. 



A keeper, on an estate in a part of the country 

 where the friends of whom I am speaking are 

 strictly preserved, told me in confidence another 

 anecdote which will tend to throw some light on 

 their tastes and habits. " Call you this a backing 

 of your friends," some one may ask, "to betray 

 this confidence, and rake up unseemly stories to 

 their discredit ?" Now, as between the keeper and 

 myself, no names being given, there is, I conceive, 

 no breach of confidence ; and as, with regard to 

 the foxes, I started with the avowed intention to 

 "nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice," 

 I will take the liberty of proceeding with my 

 story. The keeper, in spite of endless precautions 

 and diligent watching, one night lost, in killed and 

 missing, upwards of a hundred young pheasants 

 and partridges, besides having several of his 

 nursing hens killed and others maimed by the 

 foxes, in their endeavours to drag them through 

 the bars of the coops. This was too much for his 

 patience, and, finding a good many of the young 

 birds buried in the vicinity of the place, he, 

 "unbeknown to" his master, who was a stanch 

 protector of foxes, set some gins by them- About 

 a week elapsed without any result, but at the end 

 of that period he found in one of them an old 



