254 FOXES v. GAME. [PART Il. 
A keeper, on an estate in a part of the country 
where the friends of whom I am speaking are 
strictly preserved, told me in confidence another 
anecdote which will tend to throw some light on 
their tastes and habits. “Call you this a backing 
of your friends,’ some one may ask, “to betray 
this confidence, and rake up unseemly stories to 
their discredit?” Now, as between the keeper and 
myself, no names being given, there is, I conceive, 
no breach of confidence; and as, with regard to 
the foxes, I started with the avowed intention to 
“nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice,” 
I will take the liberty of proceeding with my 
story. The keeper, in spite of endless precautions 
and diligent watching, one night lost, in killed and 
missing, upwards of a hundred young pheasants 
and partridges, besides having several of his 
nursing hens killed and others maimed by the 
foxes, in their endeavours to drag them through 
the bars of the coops. This was too much for his 
patience, and, finding a good many of the young 
birds buried in the vicinity of the place, he, 
“unbeknown to” his master, who was a stanch 
protector of foxes, set some gins by them. About 
a week elapsed without any result, but at the end 
of that period he found in one of them an old 
