A REMARKABLE WEEK. 463 



and when they don't mean the said responsibilities shall take 

 the shine out of them !) Hounds were now racing up the sweet 

 flat valley for Kilworth Station, along a narrowed area we often 

 cross but seldom follow. John turned aside with hounds across 

 an ugly reeded bottom. Others willingly elected to ride parallel, 

 and to lift three easy-swinging latches. They swooped on the 

 scene now by the score. Yet everyone seemed at top speed ; 

 and three fences hence they tackled another sterling and liberal 

 oxer to a wider front than, I think, I ever saw granted to the 

 old sweet combination. ('Tis such an enticing contrast, in its 

 open ruggedness, to the almost invisible snare of modern devil- 

 ment.) Believe me, sirs, the Pytchley is a riding field. Yet 

 there was no crowd, and very little pressing upon the hounds — 

 after twelve o'clock to-day. Goodall begged for his hounds a 

 moment's grace as they crossed the canal by a bridge, under the 

 Fishpond Spinney of Hemplow ; and we rose the great hill with 

 all the vigour we could now muster (sixteen minutes from start- 

 ing, and every horse breathing almost audibly against his 

 girths). 



The crest of the hill this good fox kept, while hounds made 

 never a halt — nor did they even when he crossed over and took 

 the Cold Ashby road for a mile, despairingly turned to the hill 

 again, and zigzagged to Welford. There was still ample fun 

 and the hardest of running, though description is limited to the 

 northern neighbourhood of Welford's long village. Scent to 

 view, and they killed the old fox very handsomely at the 

 Naseby end of the parish in question. The very last minutes 

 provided a strange necessity — not altogether unpleasurable, if 

 the instance of seventeen stone from Market Harboro may be 

 taken as legal evidence — to wit, the jumping of three fair brooks 

 at fifty yards interval one from another, and the jumping of one 

 of them back again. Certainly I for one never saw four pieces 

 of water negotiated in the Shires in immediate sequence of any 

 sort. Have I made myself clear ? This was a very fast run, 

 with no positive check, and over first-rate country — full of 

 enjoyment for all hands, and one that will help to glorify the 



