582 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



the right fox goes away, in the most desirable direction — 

 while a wretched victim holds the pack fast bound round her 

 home. I leave all personal contingency out of the question, 

 believing always that most of your own ill-luck is of your 

 own making. A huntsman, worth his salt, is seldom left 

 behind ; seldom makes a bad turn ; when he gets a fall seldom 

 fails to get up again, and without losing his horse. Why 

 should we — though undoubtedly we do ? I can partly explain. 

 We do not, one and all, come out with no other thought 

 than to keep an eye upon the pack and its movements. To 

 most of a crowd, the pack is an adjunct, not the main object 

 — and the adjunct is apt to disassociate itself, while we cling 

 to our object of the moment, whatever it may be, from coffee- 

 housing to competition. Given the opposite conditions — an 

 indifferent fixture, an unlikely day, a tentative mount — and 

 all goes swimmingly. You are pinned to the sport, intent 

 upon seeing all you can, and the odds are all in favour of your 

 taking home the bright, entrancing memory of a " clinking- 

 run and a jolly ride," therewith to warm the evening and soothe 

 the morrow. Tis the fortune of war and the chance of fox- 

 hunting. Vive la guerre, and Reynard the Fox ! ' 



No ; a less likely, or inviting, hunting-day than Friday, the 

 occasion of the Grafton meet at Adstone, it would have been 

 difficult to arrange. The wind was wild, and the earth parched 

 into rock, dust, and hardbake. So much for conditions — now for 

 results. 



In Plumpton Wood — or rather in the little covert 'twixt the 

 Wood and the railway — they found the fox of the day. He 

 had an anxious five minutes in covert, a preliminary that I am 

 inclined to think often smartens a fox up — makes a free-goer 

 of him, inj'act, and knocks the nonsense out of him. At any 

 rate it warms hounds to their work. Tltey benefit by it ; and 

 they have a great deal to do with keeping a fox's head straight. 

 " Moves badly, doesn't he ? " Yes — but so will any fox when 

 going away at his leisure over a rocky fallow field. He's big 

 enough you'll allow. And with plenty of time to spare, hounds 



