[Illustration: GONE AWAY. BY HENRY ALKEN.]
I was again lying one morning in a piece of gorse near the Down House, when I was waked by hearing what I thought was the whistle of the keeper, but which turned out to be that of Lord Portman’s huntsman, whose hounds were all around me before I was aware. The men on horseback were scattered in all directions over the down, and it would have served them right if they had lost their day’s sport, which they very nearly did, as I stole away to a large rabbit earth close by, into which I ran.
Unluckily some of the hounds got on my scent and hunted it up to the earth, where they marked it by stopping and baying. Shortly after this two or three of the hunters rode up, and I heard the following words: “Not worth saving: get him out and give him to the hounds; he can’t run a yard.” However, it was decided that I should have a chance, as they called it; and a pretty chance it was. I was dug out, put into a sack, and given to the whipper-in, with orders to turn me out on the down. Something was said about cutting my hamstrings, in order to lame me, and one wished to cut off my brush; and that it was not done was a great disappointment to the wretch. I was turned out at only about a hundred yards from the pack, but contrived to reach a hedge just as one of the leading hounds had got close to me, when I turned short to the left down the narrow ditch. The hounds all sprang over the fence, and then, not seeing me there, fortunately turned first to the right; and before they had found out that I had gone down the ditch I had got out on the other side again, and ran to a corner, when I turned through it again into another cross-hedge. By these means I got clear off before they had another sight of me, for they overran my line of scent a little when they got back on the down on my track. I well recollect hearing the huntsman calling loudly to the whipper-in to get on and head the fox from going to the woods; but he, poor thing, was in a state of too much excitement to understand what was meant, and even if he had understood, it would have been a fruitless attempt to stop me from making my point to reach a wood or place of safety on such an occasion, even if my first attempts had been prevented. I may flatter myself that a hundred witnesses are ready to pronounce it as clever an escape as was ever effected by a fox in similar circumstances. For the future they will not say that a fox cannot run, and condemn him to be given to the hounds, merely for running into an earth.