IlEiMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 121 



bed-room, for I was certain tliat the foxes, in contempt 

 for the hostility of master and man, absolutely slept 

 over the heads of both, and almost tickled their noses 

 with their brushes. People laughed at this idea, and 

 talked of hidden drains, or the fox's having gone on ; 

 but I had hounds on whom I could depend, and I 

 knew better. 



Mr. Dansey succeeded me in hunting the coun- 

 try, and one day he ran a fox and lost him as I 

 had done. Boulton remembered what I had told 

 him, and had, by some dealings with him, I think 

 for hay, got into Mr. Higgins's good graces. He 

 therefore told Mr. Dansey to appear to go away 

 with the hounds, and then he would ask Mr. Higgins 

 to let him, out of mere curiosity, look over the pre- 

 mises. Harry Boulton had an eye for the ivy, but, 

 as soon as he had got into the back yard, he saw 

 the mark of nails where animals had scrambled on 

 to outhouses that, in the end, enabled them to get 

 on to the house. Delighted, he asked for a ladder, 

 and, when he came to where the animals ascended to 

 the roof of the mansion, he said the path was as 

 evident as a hare's run in a preserve. Up he got, 

 crept along a well-used gutter, and peeped quietly 

 over a raised roof into the next gutter. As soon 

 as he raised himself sufficiently, close to his nose, 

 and curled up in a well-used kennel in the ivy and 

 fast asleep, lay a fox, while another fox, the one that 

 had led the hounds there, stretched himself at his 

 ease, slightly panting, in a gutter below, several other 

 kennels in the ivy also appearing. Boulton was so 

 delighted that, with a flick of his whip and a holloa, 

 he sent the foxes from their triumphant retreat over 

 Mr. Higgins's nightcap unceremoniously to the ground. 



