304 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 



otter would have done; but my host declared he 

 could trust to the truth of the report, and we sallied 

 forth in joyful expectation. I was drawing a sort of 

 back water adjoining a cover, and, observing both 

 hounds and terriers very busy, I gave the word " to 

 look out, for we were about to find." I had sent on 

 my groom, Thomas Newman, to a shallow some dis- 

 tance off to watch it, when, having hardly said that 

 we were about to find, I heard the most extraordinary 

 noise proceeding from my groom and his vicinity 

 that could be imagined. The cause of it I give in 

 his own words. He said " he heard me call out that 

 we w^ere about to find, and at the same moment 

 Smike, followed at some distance by a single hound, 

 came running down the side of the stream, evidently 

 on a drag directly towards him. About fifty yards 

 from where he stood, and about four or five paces 

 from the edge of the water, in a swampy spot in the 

 meadow, was a small mass of tangled reeds, briars, 

 and bushes, perhaps twenty yards in circumference, 

 or not so much. Right into this little thicket Srnike's 

 drag took him, and, to my groom's amazement, out 

 on the grass rolled three otters and Smike all fighting, 

 Smike yelling with fury and pain at the treatment 

 he met with, and the young or three-parts grown 

 otter, whom he liad fixed on, screaming in concert, 

 to all of which Newman added his view halloo and 

 whowoop. The row had not lasted a second when 

 hand over hand raced up the old hound, and with a 

 rush knocked Smike and the three otters into the 

 water, but seizins; and assistinsr to kill the one Smike 

 maintained his hold on. Havinsf worried the first 

 otter, 1 took up the chase of the other two, finding 

 them both, and changing from one to the other occa- 



