From Fox's Earth 



grouped around the dogs. The red coat of the 

 huntsman gave a touch of colour. The hounds 

 were a somewhat mixed lot. From the low 

 setting, self-colour, shaggy hair, and long pendent 

 ears, one at least was an otter hound ; he was 

 the noblest and most interesting. The slouch, 

 greater height on the legs, and lakes of colour 

 revealed the strain of the foxhound. Some three 

 or four were Welsh. 



I had a chat with the huntsman. By the way, 

 he was characteristic, with no superfluous height 

 nor flesh ; dry-mannered, civil-tongued, a master 

 of his craft, with an eye on his charge, while he 

 answered a question. Such an one as it would 

 be interesting, on the evening of a kill, to hear 

 singing, " We all went a 'untin' to-day." His ex- 

 perience was that the otter-hound is wanting in 

 stamina. It is so with other more or less pure 

 strains the deerhound, for instance. " That 

 one has any amount of stay in him." And he 

 pointed to a dog with the colour patches of a fox- 

 hound ancestry. Perhaps the crosses are not so 

 loyal to the craft, and need the crack of the whip 

 to keep them at the work. There was a tendency 

 to shirk, and slip out of sight, in the undergrowth, 

 not seen in the otter-hound. 



The field went down by the mill-race. The 

 hunt kept away round the bed of the stream ; 

 all day it followed the natural channel, even when 

 almost dry, from the water being diverted, to one 



