FAWSLEY, A FIRST, AND NOTABLE, EXPERIENCE. 143 



little way to try some outlying plantations ; and, when the 

 bitches all but jumped upon a fox springing up in their midst, 

 they disappeared from sight together the very moment they left 

 the narrow belt of trees among which they found him. A sorry 

 handgate was a poor outlet, under such conditions and for such 

 a field ; but the quickest kept a grip on the hounds, and in 

 feverish hurry the rest followed one another, clinging to the 

 hope that those in front had, at least, something tangible to 

 guide them. One or two horsemen must have been moving up 

 the outer side of the thin spinney ; for the next gate was on the 

 swing, and full thirty people were immediately afterwards 

 flying a stake-and-bound almost in line. 



A few hundred yards further, and they were upon a breast- 

 work that spread them right and left, as a breakwater checks a 

 surging billow. A regular Fawsley Double stopped the way ; 

 and its two tall hedges loomed black and forbidding through 

 the enveloping mist. Mr. Peel alone was equal to coping 

 readily with the difficulty. Leaping on to the bank, at the 

 weakest point he could find, he turned his well-trained horse up 

 the thorny lane, till, reaching a spot at which the second hedge 

 could be bored, he handled him with an adroitness quite mar- 

 vellous in one who has but a single arm. Even to him only a 

 fleeting and doubtful glimpse of a tail hound could have been 

 his guide across the two next great pastures. The pack had 

 started actually with their fox, and were still straining at his 

 very brush — the few hounds who happened at first to be behind 

 their comrades unable to make up a yard of ground— thus 

 serving as the only beacon to the few horsemen in near pursuit. 

 A second great double, a second despairing glance up and down, 

 a moment's hesitation, another plunge forward into the darkness, 

 and Smith (first whip and acting huntsman) now led a still 

 slenderer number across the great grassfields, in rapid but indis- 

 tinct pursuit. The fences hereabouts are strong — too strong 

 when mist is hiding the gates and hounds fly as now. They 

 bind the big branches so deftly and stoutly ; they dig the ditches 

 so wide and deep ; and they often leave the late-cut thorns to 



