ATHERSTONE. 297 



cannot say whether the farmers term this Bitteswell parish 

 feeding-land, dairy-land, or mere store keep ; but for a score 

 of years it has seemed to me that, whether beef or butter or 

 bone be the fruit of the soil, it demands such hedging around 

 as would guard a vineyard from without or inclose a cattle 

 ranche within. The hedge-cutters, too, work with an eye to 

 foxhunting. They know exactly what a hunter can accom- 

 plish ; and they set their task to an inch. Four feet six is 

 their measurement, a calculation I will back for a beaver hat 

 (though the dents and cracks that prompt the wager are not 

 the result of to-day). We can accept their challenge when 

 we're going fast — but I am coward enough to say they are a 

 little exacting when pace has once failed, and we quarrel for 

 "turn." I like a gap then — no, I prefer a simple two-foot 

 brush hedge. And I speak and confess only as one of a 

 million. This is not a slow-going country. There are too 

 many of us. 'Tis excellent cunning to mark a gap or a hole in 

 the glance of a second ; 'tis sheer pain and misery to ride in a 

 string. It frightens us, and it brings our horses down to a 

 strain of impotent plagiarism. What one does, the next does 

 likewise — only probably worse. 



But I ought to be on, in the wake of Mr. Fabling and Mr. 

 Hipwell. You may follow the farmers here, my gay citizens. 

 The former carved out most of the work on his short-legged 

 chesnut ; the latter, as usual, galloped faster and jumped bigger 

 (with his steeplechase brown) than did any of the centurions 

 (the which is local term for three-figure men). This is an 

 era of sensational leaps, so I may be pardoned (and, moreover 

 this is fact) for mentioning that Mr. Hipwell began his ride 

 with a jump worth measuring with tape and standard. 



Well, but about hounds. They set to on their fox with a 

 will ; and they gave us a short sharp treat — in a merry race to 

 Bitteswell Village. There they knocked up against one of 

 those scientific hedoe-builders — who would have it their fox 

 was still in his ditch, under the newly cut thorn. Hounds 

 were at fault, while we rode all round the misguided man and 



