174 FACT AGAINST FICTIOX. 



occasionally real, and found several foxes, after 

 whom my homids, wlio had come so fomidered in 

 their action from Berkeley Castle as scarcely to be 

 able to trot, went at a very much amended pace, 

 and after some little time I had to report them 

 recovered, and sent them back to the shire. 



One only, who had been a splendid fox-hound 

 and otter-hound, took to babbling, and became of 

 no use whatever. Whether this entering him to 

 more than one scent caused this culpable loquacity 

 or not, I cannot tell. It had not that effect on 

 those * fox-hounds with whom I had hunted stag, 

 and which I took with me to the Oakley country ; 

 but hounds had better be strictly confined to one 

 scent and the chase of but one animal, although, as 

 a boy, I had heard my father's old huntsman, the 

 famed Tom Oldaker, say, tliat when my father 

 kej^t harriers, and occasionally hunted a wild fox, 

 with them, he could make sure of his hounds and 

 his fox, as well as he could when he came to 

 preside over the exclusively fox-hunting establish- 

 ment, which in those days extended from Worm*- 

 wood Scrubs, or Scratch Wood, to Gerrand's Cross^ 

 Nettlebed, where my father had a house, and so on 

 to Berkeley Castle. 



