80 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



and see what hounds were leading. The cry came right for 

 where I stood, but the fox had crossed before I got there. The 

 first two bitches that came into the ride, working evidently as 

 if they were used to it, were Buxome and Brilliant, given me by 

 Mr. Russell of Brancepeth. Beautiful they were to look at, 

 but because they were in their prime, this being their second 

 season, I had set them down in my own mind as drafted for 

 some fault. They never showed a fault with me, but two better 

 foxhounds never entered a kennel. We worked that cub for 

 upwards of an hour and a half as if the hounds were tied to 

 him, and I don't think we ever had another on foot; and at 

 last, while he was threading a hedge that ran from one cover to 

 another, a shepherd's dog caught view of him, and coursed him 

 certainly to a gate of a cover ride, and from that gate we could 

 never hit him again. I drew every quarter of the woods near, 

 but could never more touch on that cub ; and, as the shepherd 

 admitted to a man some few days afterwards, that the cub had 

 hung in the bars of the gate till his dog got up to him, I have 

 ever suspected that the shepherd knew more of the end of that 

 fox than I did. Not wishing to jade my hounds, I returned 

 home. 



Soon after this, I had been running old foxes and cubs in 

 the Odell and Harrold woods, with a very indifferent scent all 

 the morning, not having yet had blood ; and the hounds were 

 at a check in a small cover of Mr. Orlebar's, called Little 

 Goreong. I was sitting by the cover -side, speaking to the 

 hounds, when I thought I saw something rise over a headland 

 in a distant field, mobbed by the rooks. I looked steadfastly, 

 and, going heavily across ridge and furrow, I saw a fox coming 

 towards me over the open ; and, as he came nearer, I distin- 

 guished an old fox, a good deal used up. He was evidently 

 coming home again, from a ring he had given himself over the 

 open, under a delusion that the hounds that had run him in the 

 first of the morning in cover were still after him. Stock still I 

 sat like a statue ; and luckily no other person was on that side 

 the cover, and not a hound in cover spoke. On the fox came, 



