THE UNNECESSARY BROCK 297 



under a hazel-stool. The place to dig is soon found, 

 but the shaft not so quickly sunk. It is tremendously 

 hard work, with the autumn sun streaming down on 

 the diggers' necks. We have all, more or less, to take 

 a hand, and even the watchers are beset with a prickly 

 heat Through the thin screen of hazel-stems can be 

 seen, a few fields away, the smooth gleam of a lake to 

 tantalise us with its offer of a cool swim. Yet the 

 men like this hard digging best, for it makes them 

 certain that the badgers cannot have gone far. In 

 four or five hours we catch sight of the tail of the 

 terrier signalling every move of the fight that is 

 engaging him. The musky smell of his angry an- 

 tagonist fills the spinney, and every one knows that 

 blood is about to reward our exertions. Soon the 

 tongs close on the victim and drag him forth. He is 

 proclaimed to be " a nice little brock of twenty 

 pounds." Was, no doubt, a nice little brock when, in 

 tune with his surroundings, he gambolled through 

 such an evening as is now coming on. But there is 

 nothing very nice about the tumbled, shaggy pelt 

 hanging on a limp, dead body. It begins to strike 

 one or two of us that a live brock may be, after all, 

 better than a dead one. 



But " sport " drives us on. There are obviously 

 more brocks in the hole. The terrier, disdaining a 

 dead enemy, has gone back to earth, and is furiously 

 engaged in a new fight. The digging is renewed with 

 fresh vigour. Soon another of the cubs comes to light 

 dead. The narrowness of the clay sett and its own 

 defensive effluvia have slain it, for no dog could harm 

 it at bay in its native atrium. One of the grown 

 brocks, weighing half as much again as the cubs, has 



