266 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



gate and bridge — till woodland takes the place of grass, and the 

 great covert of Badby Wood is reached. By the ravine side to 

 the woodyard (on the eastern extremity of the park) hounds 

 ran hard ; and went on into the wood on the best of terms with 

 their fox. I am not sure there was a great scent yet. But they 

 started with the nine points of foxhunting in hand ; they were 

 close at him. And neither they nor their huntsman let the 

 vantage slip for one second. The run was made by quickness 

 of hounds and man. 



Never was Badby Wood pierced more rapidly. The rides 

 came ready, and the wood was open and palpable. But, keep- 

 ing directly after hounds, the readiest horsemen made their 

 way through just in time. And now they were on grass again 

 — the line we take every time this year, Newnham to the right 

 Daventry to the front. A little brook was our first fence — and, 

 you know, we think a good deal of brooks in this country, how- 

 ever small, and empty though they be in this droughty Novem- 

 ber of 1887. (Yet there was just water enough, they tell me,, 

 to welcome one or two.) 



Our fox, to all appearance, had at this time some thought of 

 Staverton Wood, but he threw it aside with a swing to the 

 right, and made play for the pepper box on Daventry Hill — the 

 queer erection that looms over the best part of two counties 

 being apparently an old windmill, from which the wind at such 

 a height has filched the sails and dispersed the spars. There 

 are earths, too, on this bleak hilltop — possibly the same as 

 those quoted in the old hunting picture " Get Forrard, can't 

 you ! Don't you know the great earth at Daventry is open ? " 

 — the said, or similar and well-garnished words, being directed 

 by huntsman to whip, while the Pytchley were yet some miles 

 from the earth. 



To-day's Reynard had gone on — or, rather, round : and as he 

 mounted the high brow came the first, and almost only, little 

 check. Along the ridge at the back of Newnham, then for a 

 dip into the valley as if for Dodford Holt, and up on to the 

 higher ground once more, where grows a fir clump forming 



