78 GUN, RIFLE, AND HOUND. 



have passed the gun or guns. Although this is to my 

 mind the most delightful of all the methods of roe- 

 shooting, in the eyes of the tenants or owners of 

 shootings it has one great drawback. They say that 

 the roe-deer, if they are thus harried with hounds, will 

 assuredly abandon the coverts in which the chase has 

 taken place, for a time at least. My own experience 

 is not sufficient to warrant my contradicting the 

 assertion, but I was the lessee of one covert which 

 was almost always good for a find once a week. It 

 was, however, somewhat peculiarly placed, and em- 

 braced a deep-wooded valley containing a brook and 

 two ponds, the upper one of which never froze. 

 Brambles there were, too, in plenty, and their leaves 

 are the favourite winter food of the roe. Lastly, there 

 was a small warm plantation of firs, which a few years 

 before had been noted for pig, but which had since 

 been thinned. As the valley was little more than a 

 furlong from a town and railway station, I thought 

 little of it from a shooting point of view. Winter, 

 however, began early that year, and after a few nights' 

 frost I bethought me of my unfrozen pond, and taking 

 down my gun, walked off to the valley to see if there 

 were any duck about. A dachshund followed me. 

 I found no ducks ; but hardly had I passed the last 

 pond, than the little hound commenced to feather 

 busily about, and went off full cry, disappearing over 

 the hill-top to my left. I heard him tonguing merrily 

 along the crest, then he descended into the glen 

 nearly a quarter of a mile up, rose the opposite hill, 

 and was lost to the ear as well as to the eye. The 



