HORSES AND HOUNDS. 143 



suit the convenience of some stanch patron of the noble 

 science, by going out of our way to draw a particular covert 

 which they may be anxious to see drawn. There are many 

 tricks played upon masters of hounds, and sometimes the day s 

 sport delayed or spoiled, by acceding too often to such appa- 

 rently reasonable requests, but which may be dictated only by 

 the most selfish motives. I have been made the tool, or rather 

 the fool of, sometimes, to drive the game from one man's pre- 

 serve into another's. Farmers also have taken me away to 

 avoid having some particular field trodden by the horsemen, so 

 that such deviations should be adopted with caution. He who 

 tries to oblige all will find himself in the same predicament as 

 the old man and his ass. 



There are, however, some few real sportsmen with most packs 

 of fox-hounds, whose recommendation may 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 com- 

 mitting sad havoc in one of his tenant's farmyards, and had 

 taken up his abode in a neighbouring spinney. 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 neigh- 

 bour's country. The first unusual feat he performed was, in- 

 stead 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 with- 

 out wetting himself. This artful dodge satisfied me he was no 

 common customer, but a wide-awake gentleman up to a trick or 

 two. My whipper-in, who brought me this intelligence from 

 the bargeman, thought him, I believe, somewhat of a necro- 

 mancer, and his long face expressed his doubts of our success- 

 fully grappling with so knowing a performer, and without a 

 brush too. " Never mind," I said, " keep with the hounds^ and 



