578 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



if a farm between Lubenham and Bowden provides any 

 criterion, it takes not merely a thin barbed strand, or even a 

 quarter-inch iron rope, but actually chains, stretched for 

 furlongs together, to stop them I One of our number, with 

 forethought begotten of long experience, had provided himself 

 with a key to the single wire. But the iron chains and the 

 rope remain to be dealt with by home talent and influence. 



After all, our fox had to be let go in the darkness. Arrived 

 in the neighbourhood of Shearsby, and pointing once more for 

 Walton Holt, it was found necessary to stop hounds as soon as 

 a ploughed field slackened their pace — though it was hard for 

 hounds and huntsman to give him up, when already three or 

 four times he had seemed within their grasp. At this time — 

 5.40 — they were, I imagine, little less than twenty miles from 

 kennel. 



BOOTS AND BREECHES. 



It was a happy thought on the part of Lord Spencer that 

 gave us another last morning's hunting and yet allowed us to 

 be present at the House of Commons Point-to-Point Race. 

 The Pytchley met at Weedon Barracks at nine, and thus a 

 busy week culminated in a double ration of sport. 



At 9, in the morning of Saturday, March 21, the Pytchley 

 came to Weedon Barracks ; and, moving off with very little 

 delay, took some sixty or seventy early breakfasters with them 

 to Dodford Holt. Minute by minute, however, and hour by 

 hour, the others cropped up, till at length the Pytchley had 

 about their usual number. To see hounds thrown into covert 

 at that hour brought one back — only in mind and imagination, 

 alas — to October — when the country was not half as suitable as 

 now — when the leaf was on the thorn, when the ditches were as 

 pitfalls, but when we had five months' glad, and we hoped un- 

 broken, happiness immediately before us. Now the fences 

 seem, of a verity, to open their arms — to have flung off all 

 their covering and half their terrors. And, whereas some of us 



