THE SQUIRE OF ASWARBY 



despatched next morning, and after digging a long time he 

 found them both on their backs in sludge and dirt, and un- 

 able to move. He got them out alive at the end of twenty- 

 six hours, but the fox had bolted. Will had once a black- 

 hole business of this kind on a more extended scale. The 

 first year he was huntsman he sent his whip to stop a large 

 head of earths in Woolsthorpe Cliff Wood. He took a pet 

 terrier with him, which got into the earth unseen by him. 

 After stopping all up he went home, thinking the terrier had 

 gone too. No notice was taken till next day, when Will had 

 the holes opened, and so on for several days, but no terrier 

 forthcoming they were all well stopped up again. After 

 three weeks and three days the terrier was seen scratching 

 and squeezing himself out of one of them, which he suc- 

 ceeded in doing, and staggered away home and scratched at 

 the door for admittance. When Mrs. Robinson (the whip's 

 wife) let him in, he was nothing but skin and bones, such a 

 spectacle as a man has never beheld. However, he took 

 no harm and was quite well in a week. There was no 

 doubt a very bountiful larder in the earths in the shape of 

 bones, which he lived on all the time. Less luck befell two 

 of the best and handsomest fox-terriers that ever graced the 

 Belvoir kennels, so good that they might have been easily 

 sold for their weight in silver. Will took them out one day 

 in October (a very wet one), when they had an extraordinary 

 run of at least sixteen miles, point to point, and of course 

 the two terriers were absent, although he saw them within a 

 short distance of the finish. The poor creatures were out 

 five very wet days after that, and came home both together. 

 They looked quite pitifully up in his face and then died both 

 together in less than half an hour from sheer exhaustion." ^ 



The following extract was evidently inspired by Will 

 Goodall himself, and showed that his last season, though a 

 bad one, as indeed we have evidence from the Memoirs of 

 the Belvoir Hounds and other contemporary sources, had 

 some redeeming points : — 



"Two runs on February 15th and 21st of his last season 

 ^ Sporting Magazine, December, 1858, p. 380. 

 213 



