There was a coppice of no more than two years’ growth, which enabled me to enjoy the beams of the sun as I lay in my kennel. This kind of shelter we all of us choose, especially when there are no trees of a large growth to be dripping down upon us in wet weather. Here as I lay one morning, early in October, I was roused from a sound sleep by the noise of voices, and of dogs rushing towards me. Away I ran, and had not gone above twenty yards before I heard the report of a gun, and instantly received a smart blow on my side, which nearly knocked me down, breaking however none of my bones, and causing only a little pain and loss of blood. “Ponto!—curse that dog; he’s after him,” cried a voice, when the dog turned back, or else he must certainly have caught me, as I had only power to run a short distance into some thick bushes, where I lay down and listened to the following rebuke. “You young rascal, how dared you to shoot at a fox—here, too, above all places? Don’t you know that this is the very centre of the hunt? Had you killed him, you would have been a lost man, an outcast from the society of all good people, a branded vulpicide. Who do you think that has the slightest regard for his own character would have received you after that?” “I really,” replied the offending youth, “mistook him for a hare.” “Yes, and if you had killed such a hare, you should have eaten him, and without currant jelly too.” Now, if an humble individual of a fox may venture to give an opinion upon such a momentous question, I will say that the practice of destroying our breed for the purpose of preserving the quantity of game, is, where it prevails, equally selfish and short-sighted. For every fox thus destroyed hundreds of men are deprived of a day’s sport, and sometimes more than that; and if none of us were spared, those hundreds of hunters would become so many keen shooters—how could the game preserver then keep up his stock as he did before? And where would the wealthy capitalist rent his manor? After this unlucky adventure I resolved in future to sleep with one eye open, and not without reason. I had scarcely recovered from the injuries which I had suffered, and had just settled in my kennel one morning about daybreak, coiling myself up for the usual snooze all day, and sticking my nose into the upper part of the root of my brush—the reason by the bye why the hairs there are generally seen to be standing on end or turned backwards—when I was startled by the voice of John Foster, whose name has been mentioned before: “Eloo in; e-dhoick, e-dhoick, in-hoick, in-hoick.” Disturbed by the unaccustomed sounds, I rose upon my fore-legs, and pricking up my ears listened for a moment or two, when I heard the rustling of the hounds running straight towards me, being led on by the scent that was left in the track of my feet, which parts, especially when heated by running, seem to leave more scent than any other part of the body.