COLD AND WARMTH. 473 



dale, and it began with a curl in the Cottesbrooke Basin. Such 

 a scent was there that hounds raced madly one against 

 another — turning and darting wherever their fox had gone, 

 and sometimes even driving with equal intensity and music 

 along both sides of a fence he had followed. For our horses, 

 Ave never got a pull until Maidwell Dale had been pierced 

 again at the same spot as in the morning, and a momentary 

 check gave us breathing time as we issued. Then forward over 

 the road, to the left of Scotland Wood — Mr. Wroughton and 

 Mr. Harford again giving us the lead — to Kelmarsh Dale. 

 Through the gully they hunted, then forward suddenly and 

 furiously again over the rich grass uplands, with Captain 

 Middleton, Mr. Jameson, and Mr. Pender pointing out each 

 loophole as it came. So by Tally-ho covert again, over the little 

 brook, and up similar pastures, at similar pace, to Hazlebeech 

 village, and on to Maidwell Dale once more. This plough -girt 

 ravine always seems a sad spoil-sport. It is true that hounds 

 had flown through it twice to-day. But now its depths were 

 foiled, and a halt ensued which cost Goodall his fox. He made 

 him out eventually into Berrydale, and there left him in 

 possession of his home. Such a scenting day I have seldom 

 seen. 



COLD AND WARMTH. 



In the first old book I pick up — when weary with gazing on 

 the bleak colourless prospect of what should be one of the 

 greenest and fairest views of Midland scenery — instinct guides 

 me, all unawares, to the following — 



" As when the wintry winds have seized the waves of the 

 mountain-lake — have seized them in stormy night, and clothed 

 them over with ice ; white, to the hunter's early eye, the billows 

 still seem to roll. He turns his ear to the sound of each unequal 

 ridge. But each is silent, gleaming, strewn with boughs and 

 tufts of grass, which shake and whistle to the wind, over their 

 grey seats of frost." It is translated from old Irish, in which 

 strange as it may seem, grand poems were once written; and 



