392 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



to be out of doors and to live ; to be vigorous and active, if 

 might be — and, above all, to be riding to hounds. 



They had met at Adstone, and had been on their way to 

 draw the coverts of Canons Ashby, when, near the latter place, 

 a fox jumped out of a stubble field, and the hunt began. 

 For twenty minutes they went very fast, but for ten, I am told, 

 there were gateways to help them from grass field to grass 

 field — though afterwards men found all the big jumps they 

 wanted. Running southward for a couple of miles, they 

 crossed the East and West Railway ; then, leaving Plumpton 

 Wood within a left-hand loop, swung round it and Adstone 

 to regain Ashby and its wood. They had been at work for 

 some forty minutes by the time they came through the last- 

 named covert — and very rosy and well contented did the near 

 pursuers appear, as they clustered alter the huntsman, and 

 gave the lady pack all the room he needed for them. Grave 

 and preoccupied, however, as is fitting and usual with men 

 intent on letting never a chance slip them, never a false turn 

 beguile, never a mistake hinder them, never a moment of 

 apathy spoil the memory they mean to hug to their bosom 

 this night. Men thus settled and in earnest seldom go wrong 

 — in the brief but absorbing task of riding a run. Nine 

 times out of ten in such cases our failures are to be con- 

 nected with flurry at starting, or with culpable carelessness 

 between times. Thus it is that a huntsman is very, very 

 seldom out of a run — though, like many of the best hounds 

 of his pack, his presence is often all the more valuable because 

 it is not constantly prominent. 



Three converging roads, round the apex of which the line 

 now circled — in place of continuing forward for Preston Capes 

 — brought the scene charmingly within reach of a tolerable 

 roadster, and allowed the whole following of the chase to join 

 the front. The green lower-land (it is hardly a valley) from 

 here to Maid ford Village was now the arena, pleasantly visible 

 from the road that follows the ridge. They found some 

 ugly fences here ; or why did the little crowd several times 



