84 FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND 



you feel at having acquitted yourself so well. If 

 you had missed him, it would have been but small 

 consolation to think the fox was safe. The hounds 

 having had their just dues in mouthing and shak- 

 ing, you strip off Reynard's furry coat — for if 

 English lords may, without disgrace, sell the game 

 they kill in their battues, surely a humble Yankee 

 fox-hunter may save and sell the pelt of his fox 

 without incurring the stigma of "pot-hunter." 

 At least he may bear home the brush with skin 

 attached, as a trophy. 



But think not thus early nor with such success- 

 ful issue is every chase to close. This was ended 

 before the fox had used any other trick for baffling 

 the hounds but his simplest one of running in 

 circles. An hour or two later, an old fox, finding 

 the dogs still holding persistently to all the wind- 

 ings of his trail, would have sped away to another 

 hill or wood a mile or so off, and would have 

 crossed newly ploughed fields, the fresh earth 

 leaving no tell-tale scent; would have taken to 

 traveled highways, where dust and the hoofs of 

 horses and the footsteps of men combine to ob- 

 literate the traces of his passage; or have trod 

 gingerly along many lengths of the top rails of a 

 fence and then have sprung off at right angles 

 from it to the ground, ten feet away; and then, 

 perhaps, have run through a flock of sheep, the 

 strong odor of whose feet blots out the scent of his. 



