THE SQUIRE OF ASWARBY 



which he would never admit, at last laid the Belvoir hunts- 

 man on the bed of sickness from which he never recovered. 

 The last entry in Goodall's diary has an interest all its own 1 



" On Wednesday, April 6th, we met at Belvoir. Found 

 our first fox in Barkston Wood ; ran ringing about the hills 

 with a very bad scent for two hours, when the hounds began 

 to improve, getting off a vixen, which had laid up her cubs, 

 on to an old dog-fox. They set to like business, and after 

 running him hard for an hour and half, they forced him out 

 of the Doghorse pasture — a ring over Musson's farm, and 

 back to the wood. Away again the same ring in view of the 

 hounds to cover in a large drain, which Comely was soon in 

 and drove him out ; and they killed him most handsomely in 

 the open, after being engaged from first finding in the morn- 

 ing for four hours — thus ending one of the worst seasons on 

 record. A hot, sunny day like June, wind south, glass very 

 low, and the ploughs as dry and hard as iron, the hedges and 

 trees all as green as in the middle of summer, and a great 

 many nests of young birds already hatched. Leverets and 

 cubs are very forward indeed ; such a forward spring has 

 never been known by the oldest inhabitant. Hounds out 

 this (the last) day — 



I rode a horse of Markwell's on trial, but did not like him. 

 Second, Knipton ; third, Tom Chambers on Staunton's horse. 

 Times out, loi ; foxes killed, 56." ^ 



The story of his death and funeral is told by a writer in 

 the Omnibus (the ancestor of Baily's Our Van), and it would 

 be impossible to improve on the sympathetic rendering of 

 the story, coming from the pen of the Druid, whose tender 



^ Si'lk and Scarlet, p. 380. 

 215 



