ATHERSTONE. 295 



bigger and wilder beasts of the forest could scarcely have out- 

 done. Her screams, too, attracted attention from a distance, as 

 the same sounds might had you or I — or a keen multitude — 

 heard them from afar, with hounds in covert. Two more 

 foxhunting farmers were passing near, heard the sharp signal, 

 that set their hearts beating — pounced on the fox — no, foxes, a 

 brace of them — chopped them as they left covert, and brought 

 them both to hand, dark lantern and all ! Moral. Lock up 

 your chicken-houses ; and bring up your daughters to pay 

 homage to a fox. 



ATHERSTONE. 



The Atherstone marked the Rugby Carnival (Friday, 

 Jan. 27th) in very pretty fashion, with a gallop that might 

 serve either to rouse the wearied spirit of the midnight 

 reveller or to hurry the pulse of the sturdiest early- to-bed 

 foxhunter. They gave the ball-goers till midday, and a while 

 besides, to bring their shattered remains in trim and plausible 

 order to the covert-side. Alas for the thirst of honest riot, for 

 the after-conscience of merry-making, for the retribution that 

 is gathered with the grape, and for the punishment that is 

 meted out to the scoffer-at-sleep — not a bottle of soda was 

 to be had within a mile of the meet ! Coton House was 

 but, as it were, a whited sepulchre — a hideous mockery of 

 Drought and Despair ; silent as the grave, empty as a Marine 

 Magnum, dry as the Great Sahara. So powerfully did this 

 unfitness of things appeal to one of our more opulent fellow 

 foxhunters, that he decided there and then — it should be so 

 no more. When another January comes and the Atherstone 

 arc again at the door of Coton, pallid youth shall no longer, I 

 warrant me, lounge limp and athirst in its saddle, but shall — 

 well — be found fit to ride over every hound in the pack ! Not 

 but that this latter virtue was displayed with some little 

 freedom in the earlier minutes of the run to-day ; but, if I 

 understand the symptoms, or if I took in at all accurately the 



