i84 HOESES AND HOUNDS. 



showing a day's sport, or when it is very cold, and your field 

 want warming ; but a fox left under such circumstances will 

 only give you more trouble another time, and I would much 

 rather finish him off at once, or make him break covert. 

 Skulking brutes of this description are always getting in the 

 way when not wanted, and I have a great dislike to be beaten, 

 even by a fox. 



Some years ago, I took my hounds, by particular invitation, 

 into another country for a month's hunting, and was favoured 

 with not the best places of meeting, merely, I suppose, to try 

 what we were capable of doing. Upon one occasion I was sent 

 to find an old hanging brute of a fox, which had baffled the old 

 huntsman for three years in succession ; and so satisfied was he 

 that he would beat us also, that he bet my whipper-in five shil- 

 lings w^e did not catch him. The bet was accepted, which my 

 man informed me of in our way to covert. Upon arriving at 

 the place of meeting, the keeper made his appearance on a stout 

 pony, and gave me the intelligence that the old gentleman was 

 at home who had beaten Mr. Slowman for three seasons. " You 

 know him well, then, keeper !" " Oh yes, sir, we be old acquaint- 

 ances, and I think likely to remain so some time longer." 

 " Well," I said, " all I wish you to do is, to go with me into the 

 covert, and introduce me to your friend ; I promise you I will 

 stick to him afterwards." " I'll show^ him to you, sir, as soon as 

 ever you begin drawing, and my notion is, you wont forget 'un in 

 a hurry." After the coffee-house formalities had been dispensed 

 with, we proceeded to business, the keeper accompanying me, to 

 introduce us to the old gentleman's quarters. He was at home, 

 and ready to receive us. My whipper-in had learnt all par- 

 ticulars of his tricks the night before, from the old huntsman, 

 who was anything but a teetotaller, and finding this out, he 

 had plied him pretty well with drops of brandy, until he had 

 wormed some secrets out. Jim accordingly told me all about 

 him, and received his instructions how to act. 



The tactics of this old fox were to keep running his foil, as 

 the term is, round the covert, with the occasional diveHissement 

 of taking a short circuit in the open, and back again at the old 

 game. We rattled him pretty sharply at first, but he was begin- 

 ning to increase his distance from the hounds, by failure of 

 scent, and I saw, unless we had recourse to stratagem, the game 

 might last for hours. I was also nettled by the keeper riding 

 up, laughingly, and saying, " Well, sir, I suppose you knows 

 the colour of his coat by this time, and w^hether he has got a 

 white tip to his brush." Beckoning to the whippers-in, who 

 were both in a large drive, which ran through the centre of the 



