258 The Cotirsc, the Camp, the Chase 



occasion the pair tackled the fox behind all the hen- 

 coops that had been used for rearing young pheasants, 

 and had been stored away for the winter in a disused 

 outhouse at Thorpe Green. I remember yet another 

 occasion when we had temporarily thrown up in the 

 garden at Skelton close to a summer house, and, on 

 looking up, the fox was descried gravely looking down upon 

 us from a small ventilating hole just under the roof. It 

 had thrust its head and neck through the aperture, and 

 remained so still that it looked for all the world like a 

 stuffed fox hung against the wall, and indeed some of 

 the field did say that it was not a living fox, it remained 

 so long in the same position without moving. 



There was one fox who beat us time after time at 

 the same place for three years, and during this period 

 he shifted his quarters to different places, and affected 

 coverts far removed from each other, but he invariably 

 arrived at the same field after good runs, and then 

 vanished. At last, however, by luck one or two hounds 

 traced him to his hiding-place, and he was killed. His 

 secret had been known to more than one person, but they 

 had honourably kept it, for he had become quite a 

 celebrity. His method had been to jump the wall into 

 Whixley Park, and go to a little drain that ran under 

 the wall and out into the road, of only a few feet 

 in length ; he did not dwell in this, but went straight 

 across the road into the middle of the field at the back 

 of Whixley Manor House. A wall encompasses the 

 grounds of the house, and the fox retraced his steps till 

 he got close to it, and then kept alongside until he 

 came to a flagged footpath between the Manor House 

 and the church-yard. Down this path he went, back 



