.140 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



flight of backs — black backs, scarlet backs, brown backs, steel 

 backs, and pepper-and-salt backs. I know them all by their 

 backs — the advantage of habit and place. And I know, as I 

 gallop, pretty well what position those backs will occupy twenty 

 minutes hence. The majority will be with me. Some won't be 

 ■even there. 



The truest sport of the day lay, as often, in the afternoon — 

 South Kilworth Covert the source. Scent was what I may term 

 of a squeaking description. Hounds ran a field, stopped, 

 squeaked, and the world rode. A catchy scent was an accepted 

 fact — or should have been — in the first two miles, at most. The 

 world was incredulous ; and the moment a single hound squeaked 

 again they were in for " thirty minutes without a check." 

 There are positions in which to be an object must be far happier 

 than to be, perforce, objector. Objects care little — 'tis the duck's 

 back and the water again and again. But the objector, re- 

 spected and obeyed though he be, has to find the water. Small 

 blame, if some with less command over their resources, temper 

 that water strongly. 



With a hunting scent hounds took us round South Kilworth, 

 amending the pace considerably as they moved on for Misterton. 

 By the bye, it was just this line that the Pytchley took at the 

 commencement of the greatest run of their annals. You who 

 have Mr. Nethercote's history of the Hunt will find it on page 

 161 ; and it is worth } 7 our turning to. I happened to spend 

 Jast evening with one who rode in it (thirty-six years ago, the 

 Crimean November) ; and heard much of how Charles Payn ran 

 one of Mr. Gough's Scotch foxes a sixteen mile point and a 

 twistiDg course of thirty-two miles. 



To-day's was no great run but an excellent hunt — by Mister- 

 ton Covert, Swinford corner, to Swinford Village and Shawell — 

 an hour and a quarter. Their fox seemed all but in their mouths, 

 when hounds suddenly struck two lines — the one up a road, the 

 other at an angle across the adjoining field. And they never 

 deciphered the double turn. The feature of the day really was 

 the prevalent and intense desire of everybody to jump as often 



