STEPHEN DICIQNS AS HUNTSMAN. 205 



He was also, perhaps, at times a trifle slow in getting from 

 covert to covert to draw afresh ; but when we have 

 mentioned these slioht defects, we have said about all that 

 there is to say in the way of criticism. Then what a 

 determined, persevering huntsman he wasi! With a fox 

 before him, he would never leave him until it was abso- 

 lutely hopeless to persevere further. No day was too 

 long for him, no fence too difficult, and he was a very 

 glutton for blood. It was a sight to see him with a fox 

 sinking before his hounds, his face flushed with excite- 

 ment, halloaing his hounds on for all he was worth, and 

 straining every nerve to help them to bring their quarry 

 to book. It was not that he hated the fox, or loved a kill 

 for its own sake, but that he loved his hounds so well that 

 he couldn't bear them to lose their reward if it was any- 

 thing like within their grasp. The North Staftbrd country 

 is not an easy country in which to kill your fox, and 

 Dickins's total of one hundred and one foxes killed in 

 a season is, and will probably long remain, a record. He 

 had his fancies, like most horsemen. He would always pick 

 out a place, if possible, close to a tree, where fences were 

 thick and hairy, on the principle that there a rough fence 

 is generally weakest, regardless of the risk of bumping his 

 knee agitinst the trunk ; he hated timber, and would 

 always avoid it if he could, and, determined as he was 

 to be with his hounds, he would never ask his horse to do 

 an impossibility, and on the whole he probably lamed as 

 few horses as any hard-riding huntsman ever did. He was 

 a man of few words, with a vein of dry humour, and hated 

 to be talked to until the day's work was over ; but he was 

 a very pleasant companion home to the kennels after 

 the day's sport, especially when he had killed his fox after 

 a good gallop. As an instance of his dry humour, we may 

 mention that one day, when the meet was Stoke- by-Stone, 

 the writer rode, as usual, to Orange Hayes, with a view to 

 avoid an extra trot of a couple of miles, and waited by the 

 covert side for something like half an hour without any 

 sign of hounds (this being ninety-nine times out of a 



