1893] THE SAME EUN. 247 



elements fill the miud in the glorious sport of foxhunting ! Joy to be here, 

 and only just in time ; expectancy of a run over the Yale ; hope that I may 

 get to the end ; fear — the Tysoe bottom again, as I'm a "correspondent ! " It 

 did me last Tuesday. No ; it shall not beat me this time. Jack comes uj) 

 and does me a counter good turn, and we're over with a desperate scramble, 

 not a fall. And now for a run ! Only nine with the houmls, no habits, and 

 the bitches running straight over the most lovely part of the most lovely vale. 

 A loose horse ; a chesnut, too. Is it my tenant's P I think not. Conscience 

 makes cowards of us all ; yet I ought to have stopped him. Will they never 

 make any sort of hole in the fences ? All down the Vale my six leaders 

 rode, and never broke a twig or turned a binder for me or the Count either 

 (and he was a stranger) all the way. Fence for fence and field for field, we 

 went on the same line as in the good run last year on the Friday after the 

 Hunt ball, till we crossed the Banljury Road at the same identical gate where 

 Mr. Gordon Wood jumped it on that day, to the right, and iip to Herd Hill, 

 the starting point of the Midland Sportsmen's Race. I mention this to 

 enable our absent friends to realise the beauty of the line we ran. Mr. 

 " Jack Norris," in spite of another heavy fall, is cutting out the work with 

 more dash perhaps than judgment, but " youth will be served," and if you 

 don't "go "at five-and-twenty, where will you beat fifty? "It is a rii^e 

 age " (" As You Like It "). Lord Willoughby's Ossian horse is slij)ping along 

 like a point-to-point winner ; Jack and Jem are in close attendance, Mr. Fell 

 has joined in, and Capt. Osborne is going as if he always gave 3001. for his 

 nags. Sir Charles is all tliere, but has made a momentary false turn at Herd 

 Hill, a mistake which he soon corrects. Mr. Whitworth, on the " Ford " 

 purchase, is going strong. " Yoiir horse is not tired ? " " Not a bit of it ! " 

 " Well, I wish I could say the same for mine ! " and the " Count " is realising 

 to the full the delights of a first day's "foxing." Mr. Knott, jun., and Mr. 

 Tree are coming up fast behind. I never mention names — " hardly ever " — 

 but this is a real good thing, and honour should go where honour — or was it 

 luck — is due. In the midst of the wild scurry, we have a thought or two of 

 regret for our good friends and true left behind on the hill. We cross the 

 Oxhill Road at the gate on the top of Herd Hill, where the carriages turn in 

 for the steeplechases. Local sportsmen and others will here hit off the line, 

 and dip towards Pillerton Old Covert, where there is a holloa ; then up the 

 liill again as if for Butlers Marston, but round to the left into the New 

 Covert^ — lilank, you will remember, only the Tuesday before. What wretched 

 luck ! A fox has come back here, and there are two distinct lines out. Jem 

 goes off after two couples, who run nearly to Idlicote before he gets to them, 

 and the pace of the main division becomes simply racing. I pulled up on tlie 

 top of the hill, got off the mare, looked at her, loosened her girths, settled 

 that she would not die this time, and then started down the lane in a rear 

 chase. When I got nearly to Brickiln Gorse, to which hounds beat all their 

 pursuers, I made a bad turn. Instead of answering to instinct I followed 

 advice ; and, hearing the cry of Jem's two couples, turned up to the left, and 

 all was over — for me at least. 



From Brickiln they ran on over the Fosse Road, by Moll's Grave nearly 

 to Ettington Station, where they got wrong, and had to give up. I can't say 

 what happened here, l)ut I am afraid it was a fresh fox from Pillerton New 

 Covert, and I daresay the huntsman had found it out ; but tliis is sheer 

 conjecture, for, as I said, I was not there. Anyhow, it was a good run, with 



