Egg-time. 6 1 



plentiful there they are sure to come ; they will follow 

 a rat into a dwelling-house. 



Here the green drive shows traces of the poaching 

 it received from the thick-planted hoofs of the hunt 

 when the leaves were off and the blast of the horn 

 sounded fitfully as the gale carried the sound away. 

 The vixen is now at peace, though perhaps it would 

 scarcely be safe to wander too near the close- shaven 

 mead where the keeper is occupied more and more 

 every day with his pheasant-hatching. And far down 

 on the lonely outlying farms, where even in fox- 

 hunting England the music of the hounds is hardly 

 heard in three years (because no great coverts cause 

 the run to take that way), foul murder is sometimes 

 done on Reynard or his family. A hedge-cutter 

 marks the sleeping-place in the withies where the 

 fox curls up by day ; and with his rusty gun, that 

 sometimes slaughters a roaming pheasant, sends the 

 shot through the red side of the slumbering animal. 

 Then, thrust ignobly into a sack, he shoulders the 

 fox and marches round from door to door, tumbling 

 the limp body rudely down on the pitching stones to 

 prove that the fowls will now be safe, and to be re- 

 warded with beer and small coin. A dead fox is 

 profit to him for a fortnight, These evil deeds of 

 course are cloaked as far as possible. 



