“Personal appearance,” observed Mrs. Sykes to Will, one evening, sitting in a cozy corner of his parlour, in a dreamy, winking, blinking state, lulled by the influence of a blazing yule log—“personal appearance,” repeated she, somewhat louder, “is necessary for personal respect; and unless we look as if we respected ourselves, it’s unreasonable to suppose that other people will go for to respect us. We must best know,” continued she, “our own in’ards; and if we show, by our out’ards, that they’re all gammon and bacon, rest assured they won’t pass as the best of chitlins.”
And was it for this, then—this worldly object—that Mrs. Sykes might be seen on every succeeding Sunday, volume in hand, walking with stately and measured tread along the path leading to the gray-mossed and ivy-twined church? Was it for this that the ribbed silk dress and most treasured bonnet were donned on the seventh day, when the likelihood was great of many eyes beholding them? Was it for this that, from the bright buckle in her shoe to the topmost ribbon stuck jauntily to flutter in the breeze, Mrs. Sykes evinced such elaborate taste and dainty care? Mrs. Sykes, like countless hosts of her betters, would have been justly indignant had such prying interrogatories been put to her for solution, however blandly they might have been effected; and as there is no confession on her part, and no justifiable ground for speculation in the replies, they must remain unanswered to the end of time.
Tom Holt, the first whipper-in, and consequently second in command, was a very different genus homo to our huntsman. As may already have been learned from his expressed opinions and sentiments, he possessed strange quirks and notions, and, to use his own graphic description of his imaginary pedigree, might have been “a cross between a bull-dog and a flat iron.” Much nice sophism might be used to support the poetical origin of Tom Holt; but if volumes were written to define his allegory more clearly, the end could not be more satisfactorily arrived at than by briefly saying, “it can far more easily be conceived than described.” Tom was a reflective man; he could not see an infant in its mother’s arms without the endeavour to picture to his vivid imagination how it would look when blear-eyed with age. A piece of thistle-down, whirling here and there, now catching in a bramble, and then skimming along in its varied, uncertain course, would make him think of “cause and effect” for an hour. A dew-drop, a feather in the air, a film of gossamer, often set Tom Holt “a-thinking” for the livelong day. He was a dreamer, and had more strange fantasies, with eyes wide and staring open, than a thousand such will-o’-the wisps fanned by the fairies’ midwife, Queen Mab. And yet Tom Holt, although his face was pale and thin, and his dark hazel eyes always bore a serious look, enjoyed right heartily his duties, and all thereunto pertaining. He studied the attributes and affections of the animals with which he had to deal, and took little less delight in the cunning and subtle tricks of the crafty fox than he did in the sagacity of his darling hounds hunting him. Like many enthusiasts, however, Tom went very strange lengths upon occasions; and it was generally reported in a wide ring in the country, that he asserted, when “much wrought,” at the Duck and Gridiron, upon a memorable occasion, “that a spider might teach a weaver more in one hour, than he could learn in a seven years’ apprenticeship.” Be this as it may, there is no doubt whatever that, upon Tom’s recovering consciousness from a stunning fall, causing the blood to flow from his nose profusely, he remarked, brushing a few of the sanguinary drops from the tip of it, that, “he did not see why they shouldn’t be blue instead of red.” This is an ascertained and acknowledged fact, and, without further detail of his oddities and eccentricities, Tom Holt must be left, like the cork against the tide, to work his own way.
It appears indispensable—stale as the necessity may prove—to introduce the persons spoken of previously to relating the scenes and incidents in which they may assist. The second whip, Ned Adams, therefore, must not be permitted to escape notice altogether, like one of immaterial consequence and account; and although slight will be the sketch of his virtues, vices, and tendencies, still, to render that which is justly due is but to yield the very bare bones of common honesty. As with the greater number of second whippers-in, Ned was a connexion of the huntsman, and had the right—needlessly, be it said, on the maternal side—to call him “uncle,” Ned’s uncle embraced divers opportune occasions to impress upon his nephew’s mind the onerous duty and essential service which may be performed by a whipper-in if he will only keep in his place. “But,” observed the huntsman, “most of you hot-blooded young ’uns are so eager to get for’ard, that ye forget the first principles of what you ought to do, and instead of keeping behind, to bring on the tail hounds, hang me if you don’t jam to the sterns of the leading ones.”
“It’s more than mortal patience can endure,” replied Ned, by way of justification, “to stick in the rear on some occasions.”
“But your duty, Ned,” seriously rejoined Will Sykes, “won’t bear excuse. It’s as much your place to be behind hounds as it is mine to be with them. In my judgment,” continued he, “there are but these couple of proper causes for a whip to be seen for’ard:—when hounds are to be stopped, and when ordered to clap to an open earth or hold a fox in covert, if not on such terms that we can run him.”
“But you seldom give me the chance of doing the last,” returned his nephew.
“And the less the better,” added Will Sykes. “It’s too much like mobbing a fox to please me; but still there are occasions, as in lifting hounds, to justify us in so doing. If the scent be cold and the fox a long way ahead, so that hounds can’t hunt, we must, in order to have any chance, get them nearer to him, and then it is that a whip may get for’ard to the point and head him in.”
“But this only applies to a fresh fox, I suppose?” said Ned Adams.
“To be sure,” responded his uncle, “unless, indeed, he’s a dying one: for then, as he can show no more sport, the sooner he is killed the better. I’m one of the last men living,” continued the huntsman, emphatically, “to kill a fox by either lifting hounds or any other means, except by a fair find—a fair rattle from scent to view, and pulling him down when he can’t run any farther. But it isn’t every day that we can have such cream of sport; and for any one to say that it’s unjustifiable to lift or assist hounds to run when they can’t hunt, or that we should never hold a fox in covert, is to acknowledge himself to be too tame a hand for a killer of foxes.”