A June Festivity 



foxes and also of pheasants. " Yes, sir," he 

 answered, " and we shot 1 500 pheasants out of 

 this wood last week." Finally hounds went 

 away with one of the foxes, and we had rather 

 a nice hunt with him. For our afternoon fox 

 we drew another covert on the same estate, and 

 had a capital hour and twenty minutes. During 

 the run hounds ran straight through a covert — 

 still on the same estate, from which I saw four 

 fresh foxes go away myself. Our fox beat us at 

 the finish, and on my homeward ride, I overtook 

 the keeper. "What did you do with that last 

 fox?" he asked. I told him as well as I was 

 able, and he replied, " Ah — my foxes take a lot 

 of catching," with an emphasis on the pronoun. 

 Just let us consider for a moment what a hunt 

 owes to such a man as this. He looks as care- 

 fully after the Hunt's foxes as he does after his 

 own pheasants. Many a rabbit is dropped near 

 the breed earth and is welcomed by the old 

 vixen — and this, mind, is a very different matter 

 to wiring the cubs in after the old vixen has met 

 with an untimely death, and feeding them like 

 prize pigs till the cubbing season — a course of 



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