THE FOX OF MOULSOE WOOD 113 



guineas a minute ; so it ought to have been pleasurable, for it 

 was the first day George Carter rode a brown horse I had just 

 purchased for eighty guineas of the Duke of Manchester ; and 

 over some fence the horse seemed to have clapped one of his 

 hind-feet on a sharp-pointed old oaken stump, which, by the 

 force with which he struck it, had entered between the frog, and 

 broken in the very joint of the foot in such a way as to be 

 beyond the power of extraction. Mr. Vivian good-naturedly 

 put the horse into his stable, where he remained for weeks till 

 his sufferings were put an end to. 



George Carter whipped-in to me two years, and I think 

 three times during that period it fell to his lot to hunt the 

 hounds. On one of these occasions, I was too ill to go out ; on 

 the other two, I was detained on business. The morning that 

 I was ill, the fixture was Moulsoe Wood : at least, that wood 

 was the first cover within the draw ; and on two or three former 

 meets there I had found a fox, who had always beaten me. 

 This fox always ran the same line, going from Moulsoe to Brom- 

 ham by Hanger Wood, and then down to the river, nearly 

 opposite Clapham turnpike, which he always crossed, and gained 

 the Twin Woods. In these woods, or in Clapham Park Wood, 

 he had ever been lucky enough to find a substitute to take the 

 work off his shoulders, a change to a fresh fox being the only 

 thing that could have saved him. Before George Carter left 

 the kennel, on the morning I speak of, with the hounds, I sent 

 for him to my bedside, and told him, if he found this fox in 

 Moulsoe Wood, to kill him, as it would be a feather in his cap, 

 the fox as yet having defeated us ; I also said the same thing to 

 my brother Moreton ; and my brother and George Carter went 

 out, with an assurance from the latter that he would kill the 

 fox, if possible. The hounds had not long been thrown into 

 Moulsoe Wood, when they opened with a crash, which, to use 

 Carter's expression, " brought his heart into his mouth, but with 

 the fear that, as there was such a good scent in cover, there 

 perhaps would be a good deal less out." When I had found 

 this fox, on not one of the occasions had we a brilliant scent ; 



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