JACK STEPHENS 139 



forgot himself, and turned short among them, they would not 

 lay hold of him, it not being deemed by them according to 

 etiquette to meet a fox face to face and catch him ; they only 

 laid hold of him when, by following directly on the line of his 

 brush, he could be made weary or foolish enough to sit down 

 and to wait for their decent approach. Many of Mr. Wynd- 

 ham's hounds were from the Badminton blood, and I am sure I 

 have seen Bill Long^s pack roll up a fox the quickest way they 

 could get at him ; and, therefore, as I have ever said, it must be 

 example, and not nature, that makes the same blood act so 

 differently in different kennels. My hounds, I take it, never 

 forgot what they saw me do the first year I hunted Bedford- 

 shire. I had run a fox into a drain, I think near the Lavendon 

 Woods, and had a deal of work to get him there : the young 

 pack, and myself too, had had enough for one day, and they 

 needed blood, so I resolved that we, they and myself together, 

 should draw the fox. There were several spouts to the drain, 

 and the drain, though in the fields, was very near the large and 

 foiled woodland, about which there were fresh foxes. The 

 hounds were tearing at several spouts, while a man was gone for 

 a spade ; and just as I was examining a ditch, to see that there 

 were no other outlets, on peeping into something that looked 

 like a drain under the grass, the fox bolted in my face, and I 

 knocked him down with the hammer of my whip, and cast him 

 kicking among the hounds. Upon my word, I think, that as 

 Mr. Wyndhanfs hounds learned their abstinence from foxes, in 

 a certain way, from him, mine learned to catch them quickly 

 from what they saw me do ; for often and often when I despaired 

 of a kill, they have picked up the fox in a most extraordinary 

 manner. To give an illustration of the wildness and want of 

 thought of Jack Stephens, when he hunted the hounds I sold to 

 Mr. Wilkins, there is no better specimen than the following. 

 We had beaten a fox, and had him for some time among us in 

 some small plantations. Jack and myself were viewing him by 

 turns, and with a crack of our whips heading him to the hounds, 

 who had very little scent to work with, the fox so dead beat 



