How a Fox Went Down a Chimney*

Otago Witness, Issue 2200, 30 April 1896, Page 52

How a Fox Went Down a Chimney*

The quaintest incident; that memory retains of our hunting days was the flcish of a pottering run in a heavily-wooded country where no fox would f«ce the open.

We had bunted him up and down the rides for the greater part of * day, and finally, with the scent at its hottest, we seemed to have lost, the fox in the neighbourhood of a little cottage, with a pigstye tacked on to it.

The hounds were giving tongue round tha pigstye while its occupants protested with no lees noise.

The hubbub was tremendous, and the tumult increased tenfold when the second whip climbed the stye palings and began to search the tenement for the missing fox. There was no sign of him. Still the hounds kept giving tongue around the dwelling as if the fox were there.

The whip, after drawing bhe pigstye blank, knocked at the eottige door, aud, receiving no answer, entered. Th« sole inmate was a bedridden old woman, who protested with vehemence equal to the pigs' against this invasion of her privacy, adding that no fox could possibly have come in, for the door had" not ' been opened since her -grandson had -gone oat . to work in the morning. v The man in pink was about to 'retire wifch..> apologies, when a bold hound burst ia through th« door, with a terrible burnt of melody. , He stopped to aak no questions of the poot old lady, but went under the bed like a tiger. Moro hounds dashed in ; there was a scuffle and a worry under the bed, shrieks from the poor old wemau that; lay on it, furious deathnotes of the hounds— and in a second or two'all was over.

It took a deal of silver and consolation to mnhe the lady renliee that tho hounds had uo6 killed her as well as tbe fox.

She still protested solemnly that the fox could not have entered the cottage because the door had been shut all tbe time ; but it wai obvious enough, from the sootin.'si of the old fellow's coat, that his way in bad not been through the door, bnt clown the chimney.

The old lady suffen dno harm ; indeed, the shock aud the hubbub did her a world of good. H>>r grandson reported afterwards that; he bad never known her so well aud lively for years as she was for a few days after this excitement. — Macmillau'a Magazine.