160 THE FOX AND MANY FRIENDS. 



day after day, by want of scent or luck, and then when 

 the fruit is almost within your grasp to be denied the 

 attainment of it. There is an old story of Shaw, when 

 he hunted the Duke of Rutland's hounds, being beat by 

 his foxes for fourteen days in succession ; he however 

 at last got one to ground late in the day, and being 

 ddtrmined to have him out, dug two hours by candle 

 light, when he drew him out himself, and to make 

 sure of him threw him amongst the hounds, who being 

 dazzled by the light missed him, and away he went 

 as safe as a large woodland at eight o'clock at night 

 could make him. 



Amongst the numerous instances of my being beat 

 and cheated of my fox, the following is worth relating, 

 and which proves how careful a huntsman should be to 

 stand close to the mouth of the drain or earth when 

 blood is the object in view. After a long, slow, run of 

 one hour and a half from Hay Wood, my hounds run 

 a fox to ground, in the month of October; we dug 

 him, and although I had him in my hand and con- 

 dermwd, to gratify a good preserver of foxes in the 

 neighbourhood, I ordered the whipper-in to put him 

 down in the next meadow, being more easily per- 

 suaded by an improvement in the scent during the last 

 twenty minutes of the first run. After two minutes' law 

 the hounds were laid on the line, and away they went 

 for eighteen minutes like pigeons to ground again in a 

 large main drain leading from a fish-pond at Spring- 

 field, the seat of J. Boultbee, Esq., as good a judge of 

 hunting, and as great a friend to foxes as ever rode a 

 nag. I requested the pond sluice to be turned, and 

 booked the fox as " dead as a stone." I was almost 



