288 THE SPORT OF KINGS 



knowledge of the habits of the supposed delinquent, 

 and a few instances which have come under my 

 own knowledge may perhaps be interesting. 



The first that occurs to me is that of a poor 

 man who lived near a large wood, where foxes 

 were plentiful, and where, I am glad to say, they 

 still are plentiful. His occupation was a small 

 one, and he relied greatly on his geese and other 

 poultry to make him a little money to turn his 

 hand with. He was a clever man with poultry, 

 and could always rely on making the top price for 

 his geese at the Christmas markets. Judge, then, 

 of his dismay when one fine morning he found 

 that all his geese had been taken off by the foxes. 

 There could be no mistake about it ; there was 

 blood and feathers enough to show that the foxes 

 had come, not in single spies, but in battalions, and 

 with a sad heart the old man went to interview 

 the Master of the Hounds. I should say that the 

 hunt in question was practically a farmers' hunt, 

 that subscriptions were, naturally, rather limited, 

 and that it was the general custom to pay for 

 poultry damages in kind. The Master went to 

 look at the place where the geese had been housed, 

 and he thought it quite possible that the foxes 

 might have got them away, and, indeed, there 

 seemed no reason to doubt that they had from the 

 signs that he saw, though he rather wondered at 

 them going in such wholesale fashion in one night. 

 Moreover, there were feathers about some well- 

 known earths. There was no doubt about the 

 poor man having lost his geese, and so it was 

 forthwith, and very properly, determined to pay 

 him the full value of his loss. It, curiously enough, 

 happened that a farmer who resided near a fox 



