3 '8 HUNTING. 



That very e'en a hunter keen 



Told her his tale alone ; 

 And when he gave his heart to her, 



Belinda lost her own. 



^Vhat happens on the Erme so regularly is doubtless the 

 case on other rivers, up which shoals of fish travel in their 

 migration from the sea ; their enemy, the otter, follows in their 

 wake as surely as dolphins follow the flying fish, or kites the 

 countless host of grey squirrels seeking a summer home. Thus, 

 fishermen, whose sport is too often vexatiously marred by the 

 night-work of the otter, are constantly able to give useful 

 information to masters of hounds as to the time when a find 

 on particular streams might be almost reckoned as a certainty. 

 At least, this was always the case on the Erme. ' The truff be 

 come, sir ; and there's one if not two o' they otters along wi' 

 em,' was the annual report of the old keeper, John Ford, to 

 Mr. Bulteel, who at once advertised an early meet with a result 

 almost invariably successful. 



I can well remember that, many years ago, a famous otter 

 hunter, known in Glamorganshire as Evan Llanwensant, rarely 

 went in search of an otter except about the time of a new 

 moon ; for the wild animals, he would say, preferred the dark 

 nights for quitting the stronghold ot the cliffs, and venturing 

 up the streams adjacent to the coasts. But with due deference 

 to Evan's theory, it is far more probable that the spring tide 

 rousted them out and compelled them to seek drier quarters. 

 At all events, with only a couple of tan-coloured hounds. 

 Famous and Careless, he managed to kill more otters and 

 foumarts than all the packs in the country put together, the 

 spear, however, being freely used when a chance occurred, his 

 motto being ' Diim spiro spej-o.^ 



In the North of Devon, so devoted are the people to the 

 sport of otter hunting, that not only the fishermen but the 

 farmers will go miles out of their way to tell a master of hounds 

 that they have sealed an otter up such and such a stream. 

 Mr. Cherriton, indeed, for many years had, if he has not still, 



