LIFE OF MYTTON. 153 



covered this by seeing blood upon the ice, and had 

 not the old cowman been a favourite servant, he 

 would have had to pay dearly for his cruelty. 



I have already stated that there was a heronry at 

 Halston, in which there were annually from fifty to 

 eighty nests. Mytton expressed a wish to have some 

 of the young herons taken, in order to satisfy himself 

 of the asserted superiority of heron over rook-pie. 

 The nests being on the very tops of high trees, 

 neither his keepers, nor any other person about the 

 house, would undertake to get them. " Here goes 

 then ! " said Mytton ; and stripping off his coat and 

 waistcoat, he ascended a tree of prodigious height, 

 and safely brought down his prize. 



Whilst in the Seventh Hussars, and quartered with 

 the army of occupation in France, he heard of a 

 badger that no dog in tliat country was able to draw. 

 Having offered a bet, which was accepted, that he would 

 produce a dog in a certain given time that wotdd per- 

 form the feat, he at once ordered his favourite servant 

 ("old John," as he always called him, and who was 

 in his service from his boyhood) to go to a village 

 called Cockshut, in Shropshire, and bring back with 

 him one Burroughs's dog. Nor did the order end 

 here. " If Burroughs won't sell his dog," said 



