FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND 37 



even intensify the bitterness of your heart by tak- 

 ing in his way one or two or three points where 

 you were standing half an hour ago! What is to 

 be done? He may run for hours now on the hill 

 where he was started, or he may be back here 

 again before the hunter can have regained that. 

 To hesitate may be to lose, may be to gain, the 

 coveted shot. One must choose as soon as may 

 be and take his chances. If two persons are hunt- 

 ing in company, one should keep to this hill, the 

 other to that, or while on the same hill, or in 

 the same wood, each to his chosen runway, thus 

 doubling the chances of a shot. 



At last the hounds may be heard baying con- 

 tinuously in one place, and by this and their pe- 

 culiar intonation, one may know that the fox, 

 finding his tricks unavailing, has run to earth, or, 

 as we have it, "has holed." Guided to his retreat 

 by the voices of the hounds, you find them there, 

 by turns baying angrily and impatiently and 

 tearing away, tooth and nail, the obstructing roots 

 and earth. If in a sandy or loamy bank, the fox 

 may, with pick and spade, be dug ignominiously 

 forth, but this savors strongly of pot-hunting. If 

 he has taken sanctuary in a rocky den, where pick 

 and spade avail not, there is nothing for it but to 

 call the dogs off and try for another fox to-day, or 

 for this one to-morrow, when he shall have come 

 forth again. This is the manlier part, in either 



