WOODLAND FOXES 105 



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 occa- 

 sions, 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 occupa- 

 tion of bird-minding. 



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 Bedford- 

 shire, 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 horse-dealer, 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 a fox in Odell Wood, which he left by the rides ; went 

 through the Harrold Woods, the Lavendon and Bozeat Woods 

 by the rides ; down by Brayfield and over the open to Snelson, 

 to the river ; along the river back to the town of Harrold, where 

 the fox threw himself down in a garden ; after a long check, a 

 man put him out of the garden, he then ran down a narrow 

 footpath between two walls, and bolted under the petticoats 

 and through the legs of a girl whom he met, and away again by 



