ONLOOKER ABROAD AND AT HOME. 71 



they could amply hold their own, in this sphere, as in all 

 others, with the rougher sex, was patent to-day and on the 

 morrow. Two other, more abstract, points engraved themselves 

 on the none too impressionable plate of Onlooker's under- 

 standing, to be reproduced for what they are worth — first, that 

 " form will be served," or, in other words, that in a " dart " over 

 a country the proved men of a Hunt invariably come to the 

 front ; secondly (and T must be allowed to say it without 

 offence), that when the country is easy, and a field is once 

 roused, even the combination of a popular and determined 

 Master and a quick huntsman will not suffice to keep the field 

 off a pack of hounds — any more here than in certain other 

 grass countries, to which over-riding hounds is supposed to be a 

 special attribute. To illustrate the first, it is merely necessary 

 to allude to the early scramble of the day from Poodle Gorse ; 

 whence Mr. George Drake and Mr. Harter went to the front 

 like rockets. To prove the second, we have only to take the 

 main run of the day — some forty-five minutes from Frinckford 

 over and round the " Bicester Flat." The latter is, perhaps, 

 held the poorest section of the Bicester country — being chiefly 

 light plough with very easy fences (exactly similar, in fact, to 

 the Heath district of the Belvoir). With an indifferent, or at 

 least broken-hearted, fox, there was more than a fair scent — 

 and the public rode. A hundred men and women (and who 

 shall blame them ?) were all as well to the front as each other 

 or the hounds — or more so. Yet it was a clay of constant 

 interest and amusement. And now, having ventured these, a 

 stranger's comments, I need scarcely go back so far for further 

 details of little interest. 



While Tuesday was in every sense a perfect hunting day, 

 Wednesday, Dec. 20, found the Duke of Grafton's meeting at 

 Wicken in a cold thick fog. But, after trotting through it for a 

 couple of miles, hounds were thrown into what, in the semi- 

 darkness, may or may not have been an osier bed, close to the 

 village of Deanshanger. So dense, indeed, was the mist that 

 Onlooker only realised he was by a covertside at all, through 



