142 PIELD AND FERN. 



great thoughtful heads. Herald has most pace, but 

 is too often silent when he is wanted. Funny, Laven- 

 der, and Comical are quite a little trio, and the 

 badger-pie Comical has many peculiarities about her. 

 She has never been in season, and she '^ can beat the 

 big ones through a hedge when they are thinking of 

 it/^ and she struggled through the poison. Nearly 

 thirty couple were out on the day of that fatal find, 

 and many of them show the effects jQt, if they have 

 had a very severe day. Eanter and Raffle are both 

 of the Middleton brand, and although he has lost an 

 eye and is as deaf as a post, there is no guide-post 

 like Ranter when they come to a road, and no one 

 to carry it over a dry fallow like RafHe. Petulant is 

 another of the low-scented ones; and Banker, with his 

 rather bitchlike head, is generally seen some lengths 

 at the head of affairs. Helpmate and Hermit are 

 two trimmers of the big-headed Harmattan sort, but 

 they don^t come to hand well after a hard day. 



Hermit is a very savage breaker-np ; and one of 

 the kennel curiosities (along with the head of the 

 Tester Fox, which the woodmen looked upon as a 

 sort of " Old Mortality^^) is the two- ounce shanks 

 bone of a fox, which he swallowed at Newbyth. 

 Ringwood has only one draw of it, and won^t try 

 again till the fox is found, and then he will hold the 

 line like Fleecer, whose cocky stern and peculiar cha- 

 racter soon tempted us to ask Atkinson, ^'^ Who's 

 yoiu' friend V Lucifer was called up, and we heard 

 how he dared to cheer him his maiden morning at 



