It was the last day of November, and, consequently, the concluding one of the first month of regular hunting, that I was left at home in consequence of indisposition. The huntsman had given me the night before a dose of something which tasted horribly bitter, and I tried to reject taking it; but, from my position between his knees, and his ramming a bullock’s horn half down my throat, I was obliged to swallow the nauseous mixture against my will. Between the effects of this, and the mortification of being deprived of the pleasure of a day’s hunting, my spirits became sadly depressed, and I could do nothing but creep about the court whining, and feeling as miserable a dog as any on four feet.

The day was very windy, and the light clouds, looking like fleecy wool, scudded before the gale, charged with rain; but with the exception of a few drops which occasionally fell, there was nothing as yet but the threatening of the flooding storm.

Sighing, moaning, whistling, screaming—now in fitful gusts, then in one solid sweep, mighty nature’s breath snaps the tree top and rends up the gnarled roots of a century’s growth. On, on, he goes. Bough, branch, twig, and leaf—clinging like affection to the dead—he whirls and scatters in his stormy path, and with mad delight flings destruction in his wake. O-ho for the wind. Away, o’er heath and waste, and through dark and deep woods, and by lone churchyards, humming through ivy-twined belfries, and jarring rickety casements, shaking old hinges, and ripping up thatched eaves and roofs, he holds his course, like a fiery unchecked steed. O-ho for the wind. Breasting the wave, he drives the surge high, and higher yet. Rolling mountains, topped with white and hissing foam, duck from cresting clouds to the wide chasms below. O-ho for the wind—death to others is fun to him. A ship! Boldly she braves his mighty thrust. Again. With one fell swoop, and, quivering, down to the depths she sinks. O-ho for the wind.

It was late in the day, and darkness began to drop around before there were any symptoms of my companions’ return. At length I heard the welcome clink of the horses’ feet along the gravel road leading to the kennel, and shortly afterwards old Mark threw open the door, and in they trotted.

“Well,” said I, as Trimbush entered “what sport?”

“Oh!” replied he, “none at all. Such a wind as this,” continued he, “is as bad as a blind fog or a hard frost; for the result is just the same. We can do nothing with a fox while it lasts.”

“I didn’t think of that,” rejoined I, “or I should not have been so envious of ye all day.”

“Might as well have been at home,” returned the old hound, in a grumbling humour.

“You found?” said I.

“Of course we did,” he replied. “We never get a blank day. They are too staunch and true preservers in our country for that to take place.”

My companion was now called to take his turn in the warm bath, which Mark had prepared, and after his body and limbs were well laved, he was ordered into the lodging-room, where there was plenty of clean straw to roll in.

“There’s nothing like this,” said Trimbush, rubbing his back, with all his feet in the air. “There’s nothing like this,” repeated he, “after a cold, wretched day. It warms one’s blood, prevents rheumatism, and is a real blessed preventative to many disorders. I like my bath as well as my meal.”

“You are no bad judge,” replied I, laughing.

“I should say not,” returned he. “I should say that I was anything but a bad judge between what’s good for us and what is not.”

After all had been washed, and each had enjoyed a good tumble among the straw, Mark summoned them to the feeding-room, where a bountiful meal was ready for their sharpened appetites. When this was finished—and it did not occupy many minutes—they were conducted to another lodging-house, so that there might be no damp or chill remaining from the wet straw in the one used as the drying apartment. Nothing could be more perfect than all the arrangements made for our health and comfort, and yet, in themselves, they consisted of little more than a simple method of doing that well, which would have occupied quite as much time and trouble in the end to do badly.

“There,” remarked Trimbush, with his ribs sticking out as if they were well lined within, “now I feel comfortable, and at peace with all the world.”

“Except the foxes in it,” replied I.

“Oh!” rejoined he, “I have no enmity towards them. It’s the combined joy of finding, running, and beating them, and the pleasure of——”

“Eating them,” added I.

“Well?” continued he, as if weighing the sentence, “I suppose we may say that, too; but I am rather doubtful about it.”

“About what?” inquired I.

“About the eating part of the business,” replied he. “It’s true that we break up a fox, and swallow him as if we loved his carcase better than any other kind of flesh. But, in my opinion, it is more from the excitement we are worked into than from any desirable flavour he possesses. A fox is too near ourselves for him to be considered proper food for our stomachs. It’s approaching particularly close to dog eating dog.”

“But that you did once,” said I.

“Yes,” responded Trimbush, carelessly, “I know I did, and might again, under similar circumstances. It only shows,” he continued, “what we will do when in a rage or in an excited state. There is nothing with life, from an elephant to a cockroach, but we would have a shy at.”

“Then you don’t believe that we really love the varmint as a dainty morsel?” rejoined I.

“No,” returned he, “I think not. Fancy, for instance, your killing and eating the poor little vixen chained just outside the kennel door.”

“Ugh!” said I, disgusted at the thought.

“Does not that prove what I say?” asked my companion. “We pass her continually in going out and coming in, and yet not one of us ever thinks of making a meal of her. But if the fox was our natural food, we couldn’t help doing so, and the first opportunity that presented itself she would be digested victuals.”

“But, perhaps, the fear of getting a good drubbing may operate as a check to the inclinations of others,” observed I.

“If that were the case,” replied he, “how is it that the hounds, which occasionally come home by themselves hungry, never make the slightest attempt to injure her? Nothing would be easier than to kill and eat the fox without the smallest risk of being discovered.”

“There’s great force in your argument,” I remarked.

“I flatter myself that there generally is,” returned the egotistical old hound. “Now, look at a cat with a bird,” he resumed, “the cases are very different. Whether the bird is wild or not—let it be on the tree or in a cage—she will be equally disposed to make it her prey. Birds, like mice, are her natural food; and she, therefore, takes them without any other motive than to please her palate; but foxes, not being ours, we require the ardour of the chase to make them agreeable to our tastes.”

“What do you think would be the effect if we were not allowed to break the fox up?” inquired I.

“That we should be just as eager to find, run and pull him down,” replied he. “You hear sometimes of men talking about hounds wanting blood. It’s all nonsense. We may want to kill; but hounds never flag from want of blood. All highly bred dogs like us love sport, and we hunt for the enjoyment of it; not for our bellies. But men are such selfish beasts, and think so much about eating that they can’t give us credit for being more disinterested than themselves.”

“You are very severe on our masters,” rejoined I.

“Not more so than they deserve,” returned Trimbush. “Not one in a thousand of ’em thinks for himself; but just repeats that which he’s told, and so they go on babble, babble, babble, with about as much meaning and sense as a flock of cackling geese. It’s a strange thing, too,” continued he, “that what they see in one case, forms no precedent or guide to their addlepated brains in another. I don’t mean to compare pointers, or setters, or greyhounds with us, of course; but they never get blood, and yet they take as much pleasure in their work, and are as eager to find game, as if every bird shot over them was plucked, roasted, and served up in rich gravy, on silver, for their suppers. Now, it is quite clear that they don’t hunt for blood, and, therefore, why should we? It is true that we look for it at the finish from habit, and because we are cheered even to take it, and I never feel wilder than when Tom and Ted are who-whooping over us; but, to say that we absolutely require blood, is all nonsense.”

“But the more we kill, the greater kill-devils we become,” said I.

“That’s true,” added my companion. “As in everything else, the supreme gratification lies in securing the object sought to be gained, and the running into our fox is ours. The same rule would apply to our killing but seldom, and consequently being generally disappointed, as to pointers and setters having very few birds shot over them. Continued mortification would render all much less ardent for the work, in consequence of the dearth of the great climax to sport; not from the covetous, greedy, piggish, grovelling want of the material to lick our chops.”

Finding Trimbush getting warm upon the subject, I thought it better not to provoke the discussion further, and made no reply. The old hound, however, continued to abuse mankind in general, for some minutes, for entertaining such a low estimate of our motives in the chase, and wound up his observations by saying, “It’s not to be wondered at; for true sportsmen are born, like poets—chaps with as much music in their souls as we have in our tongues—now and then; but fools come into the world every second.”