particularly wanted a fish. Then he would talk all day about any subject
under the sun: politics, art, Roman antiquities, literature, and every
form of sport were discussed with equal facility.

One day, when I was engaged in a slight controversy with his own
father, the keeper said to me: "I shouldn't take any notice whatever of
him"; then he added, with a sigh, "These Gloucestershire folk are
comical people."

"Ah! 'tis a wise son that knows his own father in Gloucestershire, isn't
it, Peregrine?" said I, putting the Shakespearian cart before the horse.

"Yes, it be, to be sure, to be sure," was the reply. "I can't make 'em
out nohow; they're funny folk in Gloucestershire."

He gave me the following account of the "chopping" of one of our foxes:
"I knew there was a fox in the grove; and there, sure enough, he was.
But when he went toward the 'bruk,' the hounds come along and _give him
the meeting_; and then they bowled him over. It were a very comical job;
I never see such a job in all my life. I knew it would be a case," he
added, with a chuckle.

The fact is, with that deadly aversion to all the vulpine race common to
all keepers, he dearly loved to see a fox killed, no matter how or
where; but to see one "chopped," without any of that "muddling round and
messing about," as he delighted to call a hunting run, seemed to him the
very acme of satisfaction and despatch.

And here it may be said that Tom Peregrine's name did not bely him. Not
only were the keen brown eye and the handsome aquiline beak marked