THE LIFE OF A FOX. 51

through the large coverts there, and I left them
in a wood, their huntsman and his master, Mr.
King, imagining that I had gone to ground in a
wood in Colonel Wyndham’s country,—a mistake
which happened in consequence of my having
crept into an earth that I remembered to have
seen there, but which, when I found that it
was merely a rabbit earth, I left, and went on.
The hounds stopped there, but it was soon dis-
covered that they would not lie, and the delay
caused my escape, for I must otherwise have been
killed. It was a terribly severe day, for I had
been hunted by them more than twenty miles
from the place where they found me. A great
part of the country I ran across was the same
that I had gone over in the previous year, when
hunted by Mr. Smith’s pack, though the distance
was not so far by some miles. The great differ-
ence I observed in these two packs was, that the
present one were rather faster, and could not
be heard so plainly when running: this was in
Some measure made up for by Squire’s voice,
which I so often heard to cry “ Whoop !”
D2