SCRAPTOFT HALL AT TEA-TIME FOR MAN AND FOX. 115 



against some new agent of danger. Now it was carriages or 

 second horsemen, then it was a shepherd, and next, and worst 

 — it was a shepherd's dog with a turn of speed quite on a par 

 ■with that possessed by poor Reynard himself. In the two former 

 cases he was turned easily within the huntsman's keen range of 

 vision ; and hounds were of course clapped mercilessly on to his 

 brush. In the last instance he underwent a most severe course 

 under the eyes of the whole body of pursuers, being turned at 

 least three times in one field and hotly pursued into the far 

 distance, by a black sheepdog who apparently meant to wreak 

 full vengeance on poor pug for sporting a brush while he had 

 none. However, pug scored on that very point ; for a whisk 

 of his heavy brush brought him round far quicker than could 

 the two inches of stump owned by his opponent. Then a 

 fierce succession of hills and valleys cleared the Punchbowl and 

 led between Burrough and Somerby — and now a run was a 

 certainty, for a fox could scarcely double back against a field 

 that had gathered from the four winds and — a close chain, at 

 least a mile broad — were sweeping him before them. The 

 pace, in and out of these grassy dips, was all that horses 

 could do. And so three fields of plough, carrying not even a 

 suspicion of scent, were very welcome to three-fourths of those 

 interested. Then came a sudden infusion of vigour — and then, 

 after a couple of miles of easy grass luxury, the Twyford Brook. 

 This ought to have been a luxury, too ; in many cases may have 

 been so. But the miserable instinct that would seem to paralyse 

 Leicestershire horses on such occasions was only too rampant 

 here. A hundred of them achieved the feat of jumping twelve 

 feet of space, and six or seven feet of gurgling water. Thirty 

 others dipped in, rolled in, and disgraced themselves, because they 

 did not care to jump at all. I know the taste of that Twyford 

 water well — and it is quite as nasty as other waters. But my 

 chief abhorrence to it, applicable equally, perhaps, to all other 

 water, is that it ought never to be tasted at all. It is no river 

 of Damascus, but, except in time of flood, is a meagre stream that 

 a three-pound trout would despise. Yet there have been more 



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