102 MANAGEMENT OF HOUNDS. 



be listened to, and who are not likely to mislead you by 

 any selfish considerations. I received a letter once from 

 a young and promising nobleman, now, alas ! no more, 

 who was a very zealous supporter of our hunt, informing 

 me that a fox without a brush had been committing sad 

 havoc in one of his tenant's farmyards, and had taken up 

 his abode in a neighbouring spiny. Foxes were not over 

 abundant in those days, and I knew we had no such 

 animal belonging to our country. I therefore wrote in 

 reply that I would with pleasure make the appointment. 

 .We met accordingly some distance from the covert, and 

 as soon as the hounds were thrown in, the chicken-killer 

 quickly broke covert, and sure enough the appendage so 

 much coveted by the ardent followers of the chase was 

 wanting. I saw at one glance, as he broke away, that 

 he was a traveller — a large dark- coloured fox, high upon 

 the leg, and the strides he took convinced me we should 

 have some trouble to handle him. Making directly for 

 a large wood, in which there were some strong earths, 

 most probably the residence of the lady he had travelled 

 so far to visit, he tried them first as a place of refuge, but 

 finding them closed with " no admittance here," he went 

 straight away into my neighbour's country. The first 

 unusual feat he performed was, instead of taking to the 

 water, to jump on to a coal barge which was moored in a 

 canal, and jump off again on terra firma without wetting 

 himself. This artful dodge satisfied me he w^as no com- 

 mon customer, but a wide-awake gentleman, up to a 

 trick or two. My whipper-in, who brought me this in- 

 telligence from the bargeman, thought him, I believe, 

 somewhat of a necromancer, and his long face expressed 

 his doubts of our successfully grappling with so knowing 



