OTTER HUNT AT HERON COURT. 263 



otter was down," everybody, except Lord Malmsbury 

 and myself, looked for a huge tiling swimming 

 about on the top of the water. The terrier put 

 the otter down from a holt in the narrow bank that 

 severed the river from a little pond or back water, 

 which bank the otter was obliged to cross when in the 

 pond, before he could get into the stream. The sons 

 of Admiral Dashwood were standing by, and I saw 

 the chain or bubbles that marked " the otter's murky 

 way " going straight in a line for the feet of a little 

 boy standing on the brink of the pool, now an officer 

 in her Majesty's 36th regiment of foot. I bade him 

 " look sharp ! " for as it was the first time tliat 

 the otter was put down, having shunned the danger 

 at the holt, and not expecting any other, he would 

 rise boldly to the surface. He did rise, within a foot 

 of the little boy, but was so quickly out of sight again, 

 that when asked by me what he had seen, he replied, 

 " a duck." We contrived to keep the otter to the pool 

 till she could stand it no longer, and made an attempt 

 to cross the bank that.kept her from the river, a little 

 island, in fact, or nearly so ; but my terrier Smike, 

 the best otter-terrier I ever saw, seized and pinned 

 the otter, and they held each other on the island till 

 an old foxhound came to the rescue and finished 

 the matter. Parts of the banks of these rivers are 

 so high as to amount to cliiis in some places, and the 

 banks are so hollowed out by floods, that the otters 

 bid defiance to a pack of hounds, and it is impossible 

 to keep them from their holts long enough to beat them. 

 The otters are, therefore, trapped on every possible oc- 

 casion ; the best trapper being a servant in the employ- 

 ment of Mr. Farr, whose house stands immediately on 

 the bank of the Stour, near Christchurch. 



s 4 



