TRUST YOUR HOUNDS 107 



wood near it ; I could do so without my hounds breaking away ; 

 and as Mr. Magniac and one or two more had not arrived, I 

 waited their appearance. While so waiting, a black-pied hound, 

 called Sweeper, whom I had entered a puppy from the first year 

 of my taking the Oakley country, winded high in the air, and 

 after a little hesitation stood up on his hinder-legs, and flung 

 his tongue. I watched him ; he doubled his tongue and looked 

 wistfully at me, and seeing Mr. Magniac arriving, I said to those 

 standing by me, " Sweeper winds a fox." A turn of my horse's 

 head, and the words " Over, good lads," sent every hound into 

 the cover, and within twenty yards of where I had been standing, 

 off they went in full cry, for a fox it was to Sweeper. Now this 

 is a curious anecdote, and it shows to what handiness a pack of 

 hounds may soon attain by judicious management and very 

 little flogging. Many of my fixtures, or rather the shortest way 

 to them, led through 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 whimper, 

 as I have seen other packs do. Steadiness does not mean slack- 

 ness; on the contrary, it is a concentration of energy; and 

 when the eager spirit of a foxhound 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 staghounds 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 Jrom the Salisbury hounds rating a hound 

 and cracking his whip ; some trees for a moment concealed what 

 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 



