A REMARKABLE WEEK. 401 



their fox probably got to ground. A pretty gallop, men said — 

 and so say I. Surprisingly well the turf rides now ; and so 

 will it, I hope, continue. 



Wednesday, Dec. 18. — Fifty of us are happy to-night over 

 the Pytchley gallop from Swinford Old Covert. Lord Braye 

 found us a gay fox and a gallant arena ; and we one and all (I 

 can answer gratefully for one) cracked a bottle in his honour 

 to-night as blithely as we cracked his good ash rails this after- 

 noon. Forty-five minutes hard running, and a kill — a run that 

 most of us could see, and all who saw will treasure, as forming 

 part of an extraordinary week (we are only half through it yet, 

 and have scarcely begun to count casualties). I must be brief, 

 though I would fain be lengthy, and would for my own sake 

 love to spell it out again field by field. Swinford Old Covert 

 is a little thicket, having river and railway to southward. Fox 

 and hounds went for the water and the iron road, and carried a 

 following after them — till the water, this being the young Avon. 

 We meanwhile — i.e. the less courageous and such as pride our- 

 selves on knowledge of country (often the most dangerous and 

 littlest of knowledge) — went for the hard road and the station 

 crossing. The hound followers were for the moment cornered — 

 all but one, a stranger whose name no one ever learned, and 

 who retired ere the lists were ended and the laurel wreath was 

 ready for presentation. Like the black knight of Ivanhoe, this 

 darkly clad horseman won his triumphs and cared not to claim 

 acknowledgment from the proven adversaries he had fairly 

 vanquished. To the skirters of the road there was given a 

 gallant sight — a single rider bearing down upon the river's 

 unjumpable breadth. The water flew up in foam and spray 

 two fathoms high, as horse and man went under. Next 

 moment on the green bank rose the pair, dripping but un- 

 separated — their feat achieved and honour sustained. Who 

 was the bold stranger who thus set the Pytchley field and left 

 us wondering, admiring, and envying ? All honour to him, say 

 all of us. 



The rest of the hound-division, meanwhile, had struck a ford 



