184 FOX-HOUKDS. 



ference for a carted deer or red-herring drag, if a straight 

 running fox is not found in a quarter of an hour after the 

 hounds are thrown into cover. The men who ride on 

 the Lincolnshire Wolds are all sportsmen, \vho know 

 the whole country as well as their own gardens, and are 

 not unfrequently personally acquainted with the peculiar 

 appearance and habits of each fox on foot. Altogether 

 they are as formidable critics as any professional hunts- 

 man would care to encounter. 



There is another pleasant thing. In consequence, 

 perhaps, of the rarity, strangers are not snubbed as in 

 some counties; and you have no difficulty in getting 

 information to any extent on subjects agricultural and 

 fox-hunting (even without that excellent passport which 

 I enjoyed of a hunter from the stables of the noble 

 Master of the Hounds), and may be pretty sure of more 

 than one hospitable and really-meant invitation in the 

 course of the return ride when the sport is ended. 



But time is up, and away we trot leaving the woods 

 of Limber for the present to one of the regular Wolds, 

 artificial coverts, a square of gorse of several acres, sur- 

 rounded by a turf bank and ditch, and outside again by 

 fields of the ancient turf of the moorlands. In go the 

 hounds at a word, without a straggler ; and while they 

 make the gorse alive with their lashing sterns, there is 

 no fear of our being left behind for want of seeing which 

 way they go, for there is neither plantation nor hedge, 

 nor hill of any account to screen us. And there is no 

 fear either of the fox being stupidly headed, for the field 

 all know their business, and are fully agreed, as old 

 friends should be, on the probable line. 



A very faint Tally-away, and cap held up, by a fresh 

 complexioned, iron-gray, bullet-headed old gentleman, 

 of sixteen stone, mounted on a four-year-old, brought 



