MY POOR HOUNDS! 136 



word "tah," prolonged and spoken as a nurse may do to a 

 child. I never saw such an effect as it had ! She heard it, and 

 started ; looked here, there, and everywhere, as if she disbe- 

 lieved her senses. I repeated the word, and she ran round me, 

 to assure herself that it was me, and then she jumped on to the 

 pommel of my saddle. Up went her pretty crest and stern for 

 the rest of that day ; and after her greeting to me she ran up 

 to almost every hound in the pack, growling, and with her 

 bristles up, as if telling them that I had arrived. Alas ! I soon 

 saw that I had better have broken through my attachment to 

 my hounds at once, than have gone into the Pytchley country, 

 to have seen them mismanaged and ill-used without the means 

 of averting it. Once, in going to cover, I overtook Jack play- 

 ing on his horn, a thing he used to do on every possible occa- 

 sion. On asking him " what was the matter "i " he said, he had 

 heard of Sentinel. Now Sentinel was about as good and steady 

 a hound, when I sold him, as a huntsman ever cheered, though 

 a little shy among strangers. I forget the precise number of 

 seasons I had hunted him, but he was as perfect a foxhound as 

 it was possible to be. Having asked how and when Sentinel 

 came to be away, he said, " he had bolted one day from the 

 kennel door," and though he had been seen, the instant he saw 

 a red coat he was off like a shot. The fact was, they had been 

 knocking the hounds about in kennel and out of kennel, there 

 being a great deal more beer than brains, at times, under the 

 caps and hats of that establishment, in addition to considerable 

 ignorance in the treatment of hounds. The return of the one- 

 year-hunted bitch, Bribery, to my kennel from the Pytchley, 

 and their declared inability to retain her, was now fully ac- 

 counted for ; and the more accounted for still, when I gave her 

 to Mr. Dansey, whose kennel was but about five miles from my 

 house, instead of upwards of twenty, with whom she ever after- 

 wards remained. So roughly had Sentinel been used, that the 

 very sight of anything like a red coat drove him at once into 

 the Brigstock forest. Jack had tried to i-eclaim him by taking 

 out the hounds to where he had last heard of him, naturally 



