410 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



the Atlantic in its more peaceful mood. Hounds were gone, is 

 all I can tell you — Blame me not, if I beg indulgence down the 

 wicked hill, or crave a little time till warmth has released a 

 rusted paddle. 



A first forty-acre field has given play to such action as may 

 serve the pressing need ; and now the work, the fun, the 

 struggle indeed began. But, alas, the next thing to note is 

 a catastrophe — a trap, into which many of the best men of the 

 Hunt (nay, of four Hunts) rode blindly, to become victims of 

 their own undoing ! The canal faced them, and the canal had 

 a big staring bridge — open to all. Into it they galloped like 

 elephants into akeddah,tobe trapped and tamed and saddened. 

 For hounds, that till this instant had headed for the Warwick- 

 shire covert of Watergall, now followed their noses to very dif- 

 ferent purpose ; for they swung sharply to the left between 

 a high bullfinch and the canal bank, and flew fast up the slope 

 to Wormleighton Village. The huntsman alone of the bridge 

 party perceived his mistake. The moment he missed hounds 

 coming on he wheeled in his tracks, to dart round upon theirs. 

 By this time all the left wing of the big battalion had flocked 

 down upon the line of chase, and formed an ever-increasing 

 flood flowing afterward. Thus up the broad green acres — gate 

 leading to gate, and the pace all that men could raise, while 

 hounds raced ahead as they can do where the hedges are open 

 and widely intervalled. The village of Wormleighton was left 

 just to the right. More great bullock pastures were beyond the 

 road ; but a still further leftward swing brought the scene on 

 to very different ground, where incident and variety cropped up 

 at every minute. Horses were by this time well warmed ; men 

 were wound up ; and they darted over a first stake-and-bound 

 with keen avidity — to land in a light fallow field, having as its 

 farther boundary the long narrow spinney that runs from Bod- 

 dington Gorse to Wormleighton Reservoir. Six horses almost 

 together. The grey leading, Mr. Corbett's big black and Colonel 

 Wodehouse's brown nearly touching each other in the air. All 

 well over ? No, Mr. Fabling down, but with them again as 



