The Hunting Year 



offered special inducements in the way of leav- 

 ing food about. I have often said, knowing 

 what I did, that there were coverts on this estate 

 which were ideal ones for foxes to select for the 

 production and education of a young family ; 

 but then, though I have been a good deal 

 amongst foxes all my life, I am not a fox, and 

 therefore do not look at the subject from a fox's 

 standpoint. 



At last, after some years of disappointment, 

 the keeper was jubilant. There was a breed in 

 Ray Wood at last, and he told the huntsman 

 about it with great satisfaction. That worthy 

 was a man who never got excited. Quiet and 

 self-contained, he rarely enthused, and when 

 anything out of the common in connection with 

 hunting was imparted to him, he contented him- 

 self with asking a few quiet questions which were 

 not always so easy to answer. So he asked the 

 keeper how many cubs he had seen, and one or 

 two questions of the like nature, to which no 

 satisfactory replies were forthcoming. 



Then a fortnight or three weeks later, one 



market evening, the huntsman and the keeper 



200 



