But the scene suddenly shifts,——a small cracked bell in a violent hurry rings,——the slight shuffling of a few running-away feet is heard,——the green curtain which scarcely half a minute ago had dropped slowly rises,——and in the centre of the little stage there now appears, reposing by itself, a white wicker cradle containing a new-born baby, who will rapidly grow before our readers into a character intimately connected with the sayings and doings, the scenes and incidents we are endeavouring to describe.
[H] Some seasons ago the master of the Pytchley determined "to give to the hounds" a fox that had run to ground in a narrow culvert communicating with the Reservoir at Maidwell.
To prevent the poor animal escaping from his doom, the hounds were made to surround the mouth of the drain before the order was given to "lift up the sluice."
On the words being uttered the eyes of all the riders who encircled the pack were, of course, concentrated on one point. A slight noise was heard, some dead sticks appeared, followed by a violent rush of water, in the midst of which, rolled up like an immense hedgehog, appeared the fox, who no sooner got into daylight, than, before a hound could snap hold of him, he jumped to the left, and, at almost the same instant, popping through the only little hole in the thick hedge that bounded the drain, burst away, distanced the pack of enemies, quadruped and biped, that followed him, and thus escaped a death from which nothing but his extraordinary quickness and determination could have saved him.
Thomas Assheton Smith,
Born in Queen Anne Street, Cavendish Square, London, on the 2nd of August, 1776, was the grandson of Thomas Assheton, Esq., of Ashley Hall, near Bowden, in Cheshire, who assumed the name of Smith on the death of his uncle, Captain William Smith, son of the Right Honourable John Smith, Speaker of the House of Commons in the first two Parliaments of Queen Anne, and Chancellor of the Exchequer in the preceding reign.
As Shakespeare, in his immortal history of the Seven Ages of Man, briefly described the first as "the infant, mewling, &c., in its nurse's arms," so of the childhood of Tom Smith the only occurrence we are enabled to record is that his mother, one day, found him lying on his nurse's lap, gasping like a tench just landed from a pond.
"What's the matter with the child?" she eagerly inquired.
"Nothin," replied the calm nurse; "he's doing nicely."