560 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



Yet a capital game he made ; and stood the knocking about, 

 with strength and endurance extraordinary — and he all but 

 scored in the final bout. 



Now let us go with the riders. Dane Hole, then, being a 

 deep, dark nullah — to enter it is like descending into the hold 

 of a ship. You are at once lost to all sense of hearing, light, 

 and outward knowledge — and are never happy till you get out 

 again. On this occasion you were happy if at last you put your 

 head above deck in time to know that the boat was launched — 

 was, indeed, pushing off, and the crew " giving way," steering for 

 Shuckburgh. Catesby's old monastry ruins were left to the 

 right ; and the course was set over the green sea westward. 

 Perhaps twenty or thirty people were embarked in company : 

 and now the time came for individual action. Dropping all 

 simile, it was needful to ride at moment's notice where best a 

 way could be found o'er wattle or bottom — a succession of 

 awkward, strongly fenced, streamlets occurring in bewildering 

 propinquity. Over the second, or third, of these, Messrs. Milne, 

 Walton, G. Barrett, and Mr. Orr Ewing landed in quick 

 succession — in no case without a scramble — while Mr. 

 Macdonald, I fancy it was who went on almost as quickly, 

 after something more than a scramble. George, the first whip, 

 pulled a hurdle out for fairer exit some fifty yards away — and 

 to these was chiefly confined place of honour in the flutter to 

 Shuckburgh Hill (perhaps three miles thither as they ran it). 

 Scarcely had they led their panting horses to the summit than 

 they had to remount for the return journey. Their fox had 

 skirted the wood, almost reached the House, and then decided 

 upon returning whence he came — meeting many of the field on 

 his way back. (At this particular period your observant 

 correspondent had dipped below and behind the wood, looking 

 for a view forward — and so was left to ride a stern chase back 

 to Hellidon, where slackened pace on the part of hounds allowed 

 him to take post once more, with comparatively fiesh horse. 

 This much in parenthesis.) They hunted on now over Helli- 

 don's hilly, red plough (the village on their left) — then 



