HUNT SERVANTS. 143 



regards going away that which I have above wTitten as the 

 prevailing system now. Further, when hounds had run five 

 or six miles, if he found a hound away he would send his 

 second w^hipper-in back— w^here do you think to ? Why, to the 

 covert the fox had come from. Now, any sportsman of average 

 intelligence who thinks of this, will, I dare say, come to the 

 conclusion that an hour after hounds have left a covert any 

 hounds left, if they wxre hunting a fox, will have rattled him out 

 of covert and no longer be there, or if they were not hunting 

 will have set off on the line of the pack, or trotted off home ; 

 the last place such hounds are to be found in is the covert you 

 have quitted. To this, however, Clark used to send. I positively 

 forbad the practice, but it w^as done w^hen I w^as not out, and 

 sometimes when I was ; but if I saw the whip going I always 

 stopped him. I remember on one occasion we had run from 

 Great Wood through a very large strong covert of the V.W.H. 

 called Webb's Wood. The ground being deep, and the pace very 

 severe, the hounds beat us, so it was impossible ' to tell them ' 

 away from Webb's Wood through which the fox had gone very 

 straight, and w^e did not discover till we had killed the fox, some 

 five miles beyond, that three couple of hounds were aw^ay. As 

 we were returning into our country to find another fox I saw the 

 second w^hipper-in turn away. ' Where are you going ? ' I asked. 

 'To Webb's W^ood.' ' Certainly not,' I said ; ' come on with the 

 hounds.' Clark was very cross, till I told him that I should con- 

 tract with him to find the second whipper-in's horses and then 

 perhaps he would be less fond of sending them miles round to 

 flounder through the rides of one of the deepest, stickiest clay 

 woods in England. I said, ' Keep touching your horn as you go.' 

 After we had got back into our country and within a mile of the 

 covert we w^ere going to, some three or four miles from Webb's 

 Wood, as w^e w^ere trotting down the towing path of the canal, 

 which was our shortest route, there on the path w^ere the 

 three couple of absent hounds. How they got there, why 

 they were all together, \vhether they had hunted their fox to 

 near there, lost him, or run him to ground, or whether they 



