over the closed eyes, panting flank, and exhausted frame of this tiny, innocent, and yet seduced orphan, who had never known its father, and has just lost its mother, we will venture to offer to our readers a very few remarks on the strange dissolving view that has just vanished, or rather galloped, from their sight.
160
"it's just," said andrew fairservice to frank osbaldistone, "amaist as silly as our auld daft laird here and his gomerils o' sons, wi' his huntsmen and his hounds, and his hunting cattle and horns, riding haill days after a bit beast that winna weigh sax punds when they hae catched it."
to the foregoing observation it might also have been added, that in the extraordinary exertions we have described, the pleasures enjoyed by the "bit beast" in being hunted, when compared with those of the two or three hundred animals, human, equine, and canine, that are hunting him, are as disproportionate as is his weight when compared to the sum total of theirs.
"no!" said the haughty countess of —— to an aged huntsman, who, cap in hand, had humbly invited her ladyship to do him the honour to come and see his hounds, "no! i dislike everything belonging to hunting—it is so cruel."
"cruel!!" replied the old man, with apparent astonishment, "why, my lady, it can't possibly be cruel, for," logically holding up three fingers in succession,
"we all knows that the gentlemen like it,
"and we all knows that the hosses like it,
"and we all knows that the hounds like it,
"and," after a long pause, "none on us, my lady, can know for certain, that the foxes don't like it."
it may strongly be suspected, however, that they do not enjoy being hunted to death, and consequently that161 the operation, whenever and wherever it is performed, is, to a certain degree, an act of cruelty; which it is only hypocritical to vindicate by pretending to argue that puggy has been sentenced to death to expiate his sins; for if, instead of robbing a hen roost, it had been his habit to come in all weathers secretly to sit on its nests to help and hatch the chickens, "the times" newspaper would have advertised "hunting appointments" which would have been as numerously attended,—the hounds would have thrown off with the same punctuality,—and men and horses would have ridden just as eagerly and as gallantly to be in at the death of the saint as of a sinner, whose destruction all barn-door fowls, geese, turkeys, pheasants, and rabbits in his neighbourhood would certainly not be disposed to regret.
as regards, however, the hunted animal, as well as the creatures that hunt him, we will observe that the sufferings of a fox that is eaten up by hounds are probably not much greater and possibly a little less than those of the poor worm that on our hook catches the fish,—of the fish that catches the worm,—of the live eels that we skin,—or of the sheep and bullocks that are every day in thousands driven foot-sore to our slaughter-houses.
if our arthingworth fox had taken in "the times," the waterloo covert, after all the preparations we have described, would most certainly have been drawn "blank."162 but while undertakers in scarlet, in black, and in brown coats, were expending many thousand pounds in preparations for his funeral, he, totally unconscious of them, was creeping within it, in the rude health and perfect happiness he had enjoyed in leicestershire, his native county.
all of a sudden he hears disagreeable sounds, and encounters unpleasant smells, that sentence him without delay "to return to the place from whence he came." with elastic limbs, and a stout heart to propel them, "away" he starts. everything he does evinces extraordinary resolution, determination, and courage. while the high-bred hounds that are following him over-top every hedge, he dashes through their boughs, thorns, and briars, as straight as an arrow from a bow. when, on reaching the "earth" he has been making for, he finds that it is stopped, instead of weakly dwelling there, "away" he again starts for some other cunning hidingplace. as he proceeds, his wind, but not his courage, fails him, until, on the pack approaching him, though any one of them would have yelped piteously had but one of his toes been caught in a trap, yet, so soon as the leading hound comes up, he pitches into him, and when the infuriated pack rush in upon him, he invariably dies in the midst of them, without the utterance of the smallest moan, sigh, or sound. in fact, within the breasts of all who have163 pursued him there does not exist a braver heart than that over which the huntsman, cracking his whip to keep the hounds at bay from it, is triumphantly crying "whoo-oop!"[h]
