406 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



Phillips always expressed the highest possible appreciation of 

 their powers of driving and hunting ; and he certainly left the 

 pack anything but the worse for his term of mastership. But 

 of the run, or rather of the brief, brief scurry just inaugurated. 

 Two fields brought us to the Watling Street road, about oppo- 

 site Lilbourne Gorse ; whereupon our fox took advantage of 

 both bridges, to cross the railway and the river. He left the 

 hamlet of Kittenthorpe (an outwork, as goes without saying, of 

 greater Catthorpe) on his right, crossed the Rugby road, and 

 dived into the Newton valley, with its well-kept meadows and 

 its pretty trout-stream. There was a scent here ; and the little 

 ladies took hold of it with a will. A hundred to one on a run, 

 as they swung over the well-cut brook and rose the hill for 

 Coton — Mr. R. Leveson Gower proving each sturdy fence in 

 advance of a hundred followers. Hounds dashed over a lane, 

 while the rush came in with clatter and flounder that told 

 loudly of the unexpected. Their fox had gone down it — and 

 going down it slipped his pursuers effectually. That is to say, 

 by the time his line was recovered, it was worse than luke- 

 warm ; and they could barely trace him past Cave's Inn to 

 Shawell. But those minutes were very stirring, very jolly, and 

 well placed. 



THE BODDINGTON GALLOP. 



A fhont place, please, for the run of Saturday, March 2nd, 

 when the Warden Hill Hunt did honour to Northamptonshire 

 grass, and credit to the union of Bicester and Warden Hill. 

 For, far from Bicestershire proper (charming and varied as that 

 shire may be) is found a tongue of fair country for which 

 hounds are kennelled at Thorpe Mandeville. Fair country, 

 did I say ! The fairest, the sweetest-scenting strip that 

 hounds can work over, and quite as strongly fenced as we care 

 to find it — even now when not a bramble still boasts a leaf, and 

 many a hedgerow is almost transparent. Nor is it treason to 

 proclaim it thus ; for it is so placed that you who are now at a 



