THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES 165 



field. Having made it good forward the huntsman's 

 natural inference was that his fox had lain down in 

 the ploughed field, and very carefully did he try 

 back for him. Foot-people appeared on the scene, 

 and were questioned as to drains or holes, and several 

 of them mounted the bank and watched our baffled 

 endeavours. It was no use, however, and our hunts- 

 man looked rather rueful as he said " goodbye," for 

 it was the fall of the curtain. As we plodded home- 

 wards we heard a distant holloa far behind us. '* The 

 fox was on, after all," we said ; but it was not so. On 

 that bank grew one old shabby trunk of a tree, not 

 six feet high, I should think ; horses had jumped close 

 to it, and countryfolk had stood on either side of it. 

 When we had long disappeared from view one of 

 these fellows jumped down into the plough, and 

 as he did so the fox jumped down from the tree on 

 to the grass on the other side and made off. 



I often pass, on a certain roadside, an old ivy- 

 covered thorn, which saved the life of a good fox 

 when very hard pressed by Mr. Robert Watson and his 

 hounds, who had been hard at him for quite an hour. 

 He was hoUoa'd and viewed " just in front of ye " 

 ever so many times, and a sharp look-out was kept 

 by more than one of us on the green hillside beyond 

 the road as we neared it. Hounds swarmed on to 

 this road, were cast beyond it, held up the road, 

 down the road, and tried back without success. 

 "Must be a drain here somewhere," said the M.F.H., 

 and search was made by the roadside. I held in a 

 whipper-in's horse, I remember, while he scrambled 

 from the road into the field, and stood under an old 



