HOESES AND HOUNDS. 253 



fox-killers that we could not satisfy them, except at such cost 

 as to create dissatisfaction among all the rest. With them 

 I adopted another plan, which bothered them not a little. I 

 kept on drawing their coverts, fox or no fox, as often as I pos- 

 sibly could. 



One man, who had some pretty coverts, which always had 

 held a fox before his appointment as keeper, I was quite satis- 

 fied trapped the foxes, although we could never catch him in 

 the act. I paid his coverts a visit pretty often, and one day he 

 remonstrated, saying it was no use the hounds coming, as the 

 foxes never would lie there, and I only drove his pheasants out 

 of bounds, to be shot by poachers, who were waiting for them, 

 when the hounds disturbed the wood. " Well," I said, " keeper, 

 that is your aifair ; this was always a favourite place for foxes 

 before you came, and I am satisfied in my own mind that you 

 kill them; nothing that you can say will alter my opinion. 

 Instead, therefore, of drawing your coverts once a month, I will 

 draw them once a fortnight, and at the end of the season (when 

 pheasants ramble so much) once a week, if possible, so that you 

 will lose more pheasants that way than by foxes. Your master 

 tells me you have the strictest orders from him to preserve 

 them, and find them I will, or drive every pheasant out of the 

 covert." "Did master tell you this, sirf said the keeper. 

 "Yes," I said, "he has, and many other gentlemen also." 

 '• Well, then," he said, " I don't like to be blamed in this man- 

 ner, and if you will promise to keep it secret, I will let you 

 know something more about the business ; but you must first 

 promise me that you will never say a word to any living man 

 whilst I am here, or I shall lose my place." " Your secret," I 

 said, " will be safe with me ; and, for your satisfaction, it is not 

 the only one of this kind I am the keeper of." " Well, then, 

 sir, I have secret orders from my master to kill every fox I 

 can." " Very well," I replied, " we now understand each other, 

 but I suspected this was the case long ago." We almost always 

 found a fox there afterwards, but the keeper had a difficult game 

 to play, as he often told me, to satisfy his master— but being 

 thus let behind the scenes, I helped him out, although his secret 

 was never divulged by me, nor has it been, until now, notwith- 

 standing he has long "since been consigned to that place where 

 many of his victims lie buried. 



A true sportsman once remarked of the country I hunted, 

 "Wliat with fellows who preserve foxes and fellows who don't, 

 what a confounded country this is to live in !" A mere master 

 of hounds, without being a man of business also, could not have 

 kept liis ground for two consecutive seasons, where I managed 



