216 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



progress down Mount Verdant, they would have gone clean 

 away without power of protest on our part, and one and all of us 

 quaking horsemen have been immolated below on the market- 

 place of Daventry Town. I am assured, however, and dare 

 almost credit it, that horses are really quite as timorous and 

 quite as self-careful as we — (though so many of us do wear 

 spurs of masterful length and sharpness, even if we hold them 

 studiously forward that the only bloodmark shall be afore the 

 saddle). The fox we now followed went direct for Welton 

 Place, touching the town of Daventry (now intent on aspiring, 

 with its nearly-completed railroad, to the dignity of a second 

 Melton) ; then took the brink of the reservoir and was run 

 hard — till lost. 



Tuesday, March loth, 1887, brought about a difference 

 between expectation and result almost as marked as on a 

 certain day in 1605 — when Catesby and his following were to 

 have made " The Bloody Hunt at Dunchurch " the celebration 

 of a Parliament blown into the Thames and a d}masty 

 destroyed. Frost did for us what treachery did for them. Our 

 plot collapsed, and the gathering fell flat. A few assembled ; 

 the majority stayed away ; and the former only arrived to 

 celebrate a failure. 



FROM BRAUNBTON GORSE AT LAST— A TALE 



OF THE BROOK. 



The long-deferred gallop from Braunston Gorse came off on 

 Saturday, March 26th — to the delight of the " customers " and 

 a full demonstration of the charms of its vale. Between Shuck- 

 burgh Hill of the Warwickshire and the above-named angulus 

 ridens of the Pytchley, runs, in deep muddy narrowness, a little 

 stream soon afterwards expanding into the almost unjumpable 

 Leame. And, believe me, the green valley that it drains is in 

 every sense typical of the cream of the Midlands — not so flat as 

 Crick-and-Hilmorton, not so hilly as Skeffington, not so simple 

 as Misterton, yet not so stupendous as Oxendon. The brook 



