90 FOX-HOUND, IOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



seemed strangely abroad in his own country. If tired, he 

 must have been marvellously stout. With the scent as good 

 as ever, they pressed him over grass and occasional plough 

 round Ragdale ; past the back of Six Hills towards Wimeswold. 

 Without assistance they hunted fast over this district, bent 

 back to the right to recross the Fosse, and lost him suddenly 

 and inexplicably as he dodged the hedgerows about a mile from 

 Old Dalby Wood. For an hour and seventeen minutes they had 

 been running continuously, and generally hard — the extreme 

 points (from Scalford Spinney into the barren region beyond 

 Six Hills) quite seven miles and a half apart. 



Every evil element was brought into play on Friday and 

 Saturday (Jan. 26 and 27) — snow, hail, wind, and rain, and 

 the vilest of them all was the wind. No one needs to be 

 reminded that a rampant gale was blowing on both those days. 

 It mattered little or nothing that it scattered your tiles and 

 chimney j^ots ; for you were either snugly indoors, or foolishly 

 out hunting. Friday was wind and sunshine — a fixture rather 

 more pleasant than the tempest and downpour of the Saturday. 

 It took two hands and a facile horse to open a gate on Friday. 

 Saturday called for an amiable mind, and the most artful of 

 clothing, to withstand the rushing rain and the piercing cold, 

 that assailed one at the door and bullied one incessantly till 

 the same shelter was regained. Pleasure — duty — or want of 

 moral courage : which was the impelling power that forced so 

 many frail forms to the covertside on that wild wet Saturday 

 with the Cottesmore ? Pleasure could certainly not have been 

 the agent, unless in its falsest phase, anticipation. Duty is a 

 force that has its weight with some ; but is by no means an 

 universal or even a fashionable influence in this latter half of 

 the nineteenth century — and in this instance was likely to 

 sway only the Hunt officials, and perhaps some wretched 

 correspondent. So Want of Moral Courage — the dread of 

 omitting to do what others would probably venture — is the 



