106 THE FOX 



of sixty or seventy acres. Sometimes he was forced 

 away, and then he would run up and down the hedge- 

 rows till he got into some rabbit-hole or drain. One 

 favourite place was a pollard willow hanging over a 

 small river. Here he crouched until his hiding-place 

 was discovered. He sprang into the water, hounds 

 had a view, and rushed pell mell over the stream 

 and half-way across one meadow on the opposite side 

 before they found out that the fox was not in front of 

 them. Then they checked. In the meantime the 

 fox had never left the bed of the stream at all, but 

 turning sharply he threaded along in a reed-bed 

 underneath the overhanging bank for some distance 

 and then was seen to swim back. This fox is 

 believed to have been killed in a drain by a terrier 

 at last, but only after he had lived for some years. 



Sometimes, however, we hit on the line of the 

 larger fox or we changed on to him in covert. His 

 tactics were perfectly simple. He went straight away 

 for five miles to a big wood, tried the earths and then 

 crossed the border of our hunt for another refuge two 

 or three miles further on, and either ran hounds out 

 of scent or got in somewhere. But he never failed to 

 try the main earth in the covert to which he ran. Of 

 course he found it stopped, and he then went right 

 on as before. He trusted to his speed and endur- 



