A DIFFERENCE 'TWIXT PLEASURE AND DUTY. 129 



kennel and field. He came, and was clothed in our 

 tawny coat, and put upon a steady mare ; but as I 

 have seen on other occasions, he was twice the boy 

 when out for his own pleasure, that he was when out 

 for mine ; in short, the moment his whim became a 

 duty he was worthless, and after being with me 

 some time, having caught the lash of my whip for 

 being slack, he said nothing, but coolly returned 

 home, put his horse in my stable, and retired once 

 more to the more idle and less lucrative occupation 

 of bird-mindino;. 



In the previous pages I have said that, in the 

 sequel, I would show the effect of my work in the 

 woodlands, and the giving the fox to the hounds 

 in the heart of the covers. In the third, fourth, and 

 fifth years of my keeping hounds in Bedfordshire, 

 the foxes would fly the woods for the open, or 

 throughout the woods by the rides from cover to 

 cover, as if they knew no safety-place. I will give 

 several instances of it. In drawing the famed Odell 

 Great Wood, where it was said, before I came, that 

 all sport ended ; if I did not send a whipper-in, or 

 some farmer whom I could trust to do as I told him, 

 a long way down wind, the instant my voice was 

 heard speaking to the hounds, the wild woodland 

 fox would be off like a shot. Harry Boulton, poor 

 Jem Whitworth, poor Brown the lawyer (the latter 

 are both dead), and one or two more, and old Dick 

 Perkins, the horsedealer, used to be thus commissioned; 

 and many a quick and fortunate holloa they gave me ; 

 orders being not to holloa from where they stood and 

 saw the fox (a fault often committed), but to gallop 

 down to where they saw him, and then to holloa. To 

 enumerate a few of the runs thus had; — I found 



K 



