A Day With the Essex Otterhounds 237 



getting you past trouble, and care is as rattled at the note of 

 a huntsman's horn as a girl at her lover's first call. 



Here they come, hard as nails every one of them. The fox- 

 hounds come on with a grand stately air (the heavy artillery 

 of the Command) ; the otterhounds look as if thej'^ would hold 

 on like death (they are the infantry) ; then the lighter AVelsh 

 hounds (the cavalry contingent), full of endurance, speed, 

 fire and dash. Finally the little wire-haired (old English 

 bred white) terriers, three of them, with each particular hair 

 standing by itself. They went as they pleased, and took upon 

 themselves the welfare of the whole command. They barked 

 at a small boy who only sat on a fence and looked at the 

 hounds as they passed by and at a big traction engine for 

 committing a similar offence. Chickens and farm dogs, how- 

 ever, were beneath their notice. They drove a vile smelling 

 motor car down the road in a hurry, and a rattling mowing 

 maclune to the other side of the field. They went anywhere 

 without let or liindrance, and acted as if they were it all the 

 while. If a big foxhound jumped down a fourfoot bank into 

 the stream, the little wire-haired threw himself headlong after. 

 When the Master rallied the hounds to the "drag" of an otter, 

 the little brats were as likely as not in the very middle of the 

 fray. 



The horn has sounded, and, headed by the JVIaster, Mr. I. 

 Rose, the skirmish begins. After a short turn down stream, 

 the hounds return and all move on up water, the followers and 

 hounds about equally divided on either bank with two whip- 

 pers-in on one side of the stream, the Master with another 

 whipper-in on the other side. 



Hounds were making good every inch of the way, some 

 on land, some swimming along either bank, poking their 

 sensitive noses in every recess likely to have harboured an 

 otter. Up the stream for a mile or more go the followers, in 

 single file along the narrow trails. Presently, an otterhound 



