BICESTERSHIRE. 153 



and out on the right. Two loose horses within a quarter of a 

 mile gave token that the pace was telling. " Hang his bridle 

 over the gatepost, sir, and push along ; or you'll never see 

 hounds again to-day ! " Plough once more ! Wheat that can 

 never pay, and stubble that must have cost three pounds an 

 acre, dead loss ! Alas, for agriculture ! Well, each Radical 

 cow will demand most of her three acres in grass, will she not ? 

 But, heavens, how close the fences will come then ! They are 

 wide apart just now — thirty or forty acres to each field — the 

 speckled pack glancing in front, half-a-dozen riders struggling 

 across the plough in their wake, and several sensible men 

 skying off to the left to gain a parallel line of grass, even at the 

 cost of a stout flight of rails and its varied consequences. Into 

 another lane, with the same deep and hairy ditch beside it, 

 that has already distinguished so many fences and extinguished 

 no few followers. Another plough team, working by the way- 

 side. " He's gone for the corner ! " Yes, but which corner ? 

 And till hounds can glean the teamster's meaning, or the 

 huntsman can carry them in the direction gradually intimated, 

 a half minute is lost that means a quarter of an hour's reprieve 

 to their gallant fox. In his blown and distressed condition he 

 has turned away from the first wood now encountered (Crown 

 Lands, I believe), clung to the neat open rides of the second, 

 Bucknalls, and struggled out beyond for a final effort home- 

 wards. Bearing back from the village of Abthorpe, he is 

 plainly to be viewed in front, toiling over the grass fields by 

 the railway. Now, they must have him, and they've earned 

 him. If you have any blood in your body, it must spring in 

 your veins at this moment — the most spirit-stirring in fox- 

 hunting. Don't your hackles go up like the bristles of the 

 straining bitches now running for blood — else why that hot- 

 and-cold feeling down the backbone as you drive the Latchfords 

 once home into your tired beast, and your thoughts flash back 

 to old Jorrocks in his maddest, wildest happiness ? " 'Ere's the 

 fox ! " cries a boy in the ballast hole by the railway bank, 

 while out bounces a banging old hare, and close in her tracks, 



