2 MELTON AND HOMESPUN 



" He always killed a May fox; and there were strange 

 tales about his having been seen cub-hunting by himself 

 with a few couple of hounds in out-of-the-way parts of 

 the country before the end of June. Of course he always 

 denied it, and said that he was merely exercising the 

 hounds; but, knowing the man, I can well beheve that 

 rumour, for once, was no liar. It was just the sort of 

 thing he would do. Indeed, as he himself said, only lack 

 of sufficient means prevented him from hunting seven 

 days a week. 



" He was very far from being an ideal Master of Hounds. 

 He never considered the field in the least ; and time and 

 time again he slipped out of cover without so much as a 

 touch on the horn, leaving the entire field, and sometimes 

 even the whips, too, behind. It was not selfishness ; 

 only that in the hunting field he was practically a hound 

 himself. 



" Many considered him bloodthirsty; and certainly he 

 would go to extraordinary lengths to kill his fox, often 

 digging him out of what had seemed the most impregnable 

 places at all hours of the night. The more trouble a fox 

 gave him, the more bent on killing him he became ; and 

 if he and his hounds were baffled he used to get beside 

 himself with rage. With him, hunting was not a sport, 

 it was an obsession. 



" Fortunately the fox supply in the Haycester country 

 has always been exceptionally good, and fortunately they 

 take a good deal of kilhng; he would have well-nigh 

 exhausted most countries in a very short time. As it 

 was the show of foxes in some of the more open parts 

 was not what it should have been for several years after 

 Nunn's regime. 



