124 HOUND AND HORN 



just below the village. Surely he is doomed now ! 

 But it was not till an hour later that I took off his 

 brush and threw him to the pack. 'Twas this way. 

 After he had lain down in a ploughed field and 

 hounds overrun him, Pirate and Dexter pushed 

 him up and he made a spurt for the river. Two 

 hounds rushed at him and simultaneously pinned 

 him on the top of a high bank and rolled down 

 into the deep pool, below a sort of fall, where they 

 throttled him and then left him. We could not 

 discover him in the failing light till the pool got 

 smoothed and was free from hounds swimming in 

 it, and until the discoloured water had cleared. 

 Then we got sight of him in about eight or nine 

 feet of water poised on the point of his nose and 

 two fore pads, his brush stretched stifQy out be- 

 hind him, about six feet below the surface. The 

 pool was enclosed by a shelving bank of gravel 

 which sloped suddenly down into at least twelve 

 feet of depth, and as the fox was, so to speak, 

 suspended exactly in the centre of the pool, he 

 could not be reached from the side with paling 

 bars, and to attempt him from below only meant 

 pushing him into deeper water. My bribe to the 

 assembled boys to strip and dive for him was not 

 responded to, so in the end I waded the " powney " 

 in as far as she would go, and with a crooked 

 wire hooked him ; but for some time it looked as if 

 hounds were going to lose the satisfaction of tearing 

 and eating their fox. 



Another very satisfactory by-day was a Monday 

 after a very hard Saturday, which had lamed half 

 the pack. I had not the most remote notion of 



