STUBBS THE BADGER 
229 
for a pale sun spot in the mist overhead, it was 
as still and damp as at daybreak. 
The jays, scolding in the Fir Plantation at the 
top of the wood, saw Greybrush running hard from 
Carigaboola with seven couple of hounds behind 
him. His tongue was out and his brush was down, 
and he thought gratefully of the ' earth ' on Larch 
Hill as he tore through the brambles, and stubbed 
his nose against tree-roots, as fast as his stiff legs 
would carry him. All the chaffinches cried : ' Spink 
spink see the fox ! 'ware fox ! ' but as the 
hounds did not understand finch language it did 
not matter much. He dived in through his back 
door just as the foremost hound burst out of the 
covert. The latter marked the place, and bayed 
there, with his comrades round him, until the men 
rode up. The huntsman crashed through the 
bushes and looked at the hole, and then he ordered 
a terrier to be brought and put in, that it might 
bolt the fox. But Paddy Magragh came down the 
path, and although he knew that he ought to have 
found and stopped this hole, yet his love of the 
hunt was greater than his pride in his woodcraft, 
and he said : ' Bedam, Captain, if ye put a terrier 
down there ye '11 niver see the tail of him again. 
This burra' goes into the " earth " below, and there 's 
badgers in it. Shure, they 'd ate him.' 
Q3 
