132 REMINISCP^NCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 



a pack of hounds may soon attain by judicious ma- 

 nagement and very little flogging. Many of my 

 fixtures, or rather the shortest way to them, led 

 throuo-h the rides of covers I did. not intend to draw: 

 and had I not induced my pack to great steadiness, 

 they would have bolted away to the first wood with 

 a riotous Avhimper, as I have seen other packs do. 

 Steadiness does not mean slackness ; on the contrary, 

 it is a concentration of energy ; and when the eager 

 spirit of a fox-hound is restrained till the right 

 moment, his resolution to do his utmost only bursts 

 forth with renovated vigour. Sweeper looked at me, 

 after he had told me there was a fox, and waited for 

 the sign to begin. 



The first year of my hunting this country I had 

 been running a fox in the chase, but had lost him 

 in or about the deer park. Among the stag-hounds 

 I had brought with me were Duncan and Dinah, 

 bred by Lord Fitzhardinge; and better foxhounds 

 never ran. In crossing the deer park, foiled as it 

 was by fallow deer, I heard the man from the Salis- 

 bury hounds rating a hound and cracking his whip ; 

 some trees for a moment concealed wliat he was about, 

 but when a view opened I saw him in the act of riding 

 at Duncan, to cut him with his whip. Duncan was not 

 speaking, but, his nose to the ground, he was feathering 

 on a line of scent ; and when the whipper-in rode at 

 him, rather than quit the line, he risked being trod 

 on by the horse and struck by the whip, and merely 

 crouched down on the spot without yielding an inch. 

 Though Duncan did not speak, I did, and at once 

 stopped this error; I then rode up and softly' en- 

 couraged the hound, who joyously held on, and in a 

 hundred yards farther he was joined in his work by 



