HUNTING THE FOX 219 



Mr. Facey Romford used to say to himself when his 

 hounds came to a check, ' Now, Facey, me boooy, what 

 would you do if you were a fox ? ' and that is probably 

 not a bad principle for a huntsman to go upon. 

 There is enough of the animal in man to enable us 

 to divine something of the wiles of the fox. Neverthe- 

 less the hunted fox not seldom outwits us, and it is 

 only after he is lost and the run is over that we 

 see what we ought to have done. Some men have 

 an extraordinary gift of divining which way a fox has 

 gone, and what he has done or is likely to do. Mr. 

 Tom (or Gentleman) Smith was one most notable 

 instance of this. It was said of him that a fox was 

 less safe with Tom Smith after him with a stick than 

 if pursued by anyone else with a pack of hounds. 

 But the fox is, as we have seen, sometimes too clever 

 even for the cleverest huntsman. There is a well- 

 known instance of a pack which ran a fox to the 

 edge of a steep cliff. Apparently there was nothing but 

 a sheer drop, and the field turned away, confident 

 that the quarry must have shared the fate of some lead- 

 ing hounds who had fallen over in the eagerness of 

 pursuit, and been killed on the rocks below. But 

 again and again a fox followed the same tactics, until 

 they came to the conclusion that this fox must be the 

 same. A man was set to watch, crouched behind the 



