AULD LANG SYNE. 337 



took the field. They could hunt, they could chase, 

 were stout and steady, and in short could do every- 

 thing a man could wish. No scent was too good and 

 none too bad for them. They could cut him up in fifty 

 minutes, or could hunt him for three hours. In a 

 catching, ticklish scent (the most difficult of all), 

 they would show their wonderful prowess. What- 

 ever it was, they would go up to it, and when they 

 could not carry it on, would lean to it, to tell you 

 which way to hold them. Charles King and Jack 

 Wood were brilliants of the first water, and what 

 was of the greatest importance, they were good 

 friends. They used to split them in their cast, and 

 make their circle in half the time that rural sports- 

 men are wont to do, so that instead of losing time, 

 and dropping to hunting, they killed many a fox, 

 who would otherwise have walked away from them. 

 They were splendidly mounted, and in short the 

 whole thing was perfect. Hunting was Lord Al- 

 thorp's forte, and pity it was that he ever turned 

 his mind away from it. 



Lord Spencer's (father of the late Lord) was 

 a fine powerful pack, something in the style of 

 Lord Monson's, but they had not the sport they 

 ought to have had. Dick Knight had the whole 

 management of them, both as to breeding and 

 hunting them. He was a fine horseman, and was 

 magnificently mounted, but he had no patience. He 

 thought he knew better than the hounds, and was 

 too fond of lifting them. There was an old story of 

 a run he had with a fox, the skin of whose head was 

 nailed over one of the stable doors at Pytchley. He 

 found him at Sywell Wood, and recognised him as 

 an old friend, from a peculiar mode of twisting his 

 brush over his back. He had beat him several 

 times, and he was determined if possible to have 

 him by fair means or foul. Knowing the line he 

 had before taken, he did not lay them on the scent, 



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