RIDING TO FOX-HOUNDS. 185 



they will begin to run very hard, and this is a good 

 reason for never letting them get, so to speak, out of 

 your reach. I repeat, as a general rule, but by no 

 means without exception. In Leicestershire especially, 

 foxes seem to scorn this fine old principle, and will 

 make their point with a stiff breeze blowing in their 

 teeth ; but on such occasions they do not usually mean 

 to go very far, and the. gallant veteran, with his white 

 tag, that gives you the run to be talked of for years, is 

 almost always a wind-sinker from wold or woodland in 

 an adjoining hunt. 



Suppose, however, the day is perfectly calm, and 

 there seems no sufficient reason to prefer one course to 

 the other, should we go to right or left? This is 

 a matter in which neither precept nor personal expe- 

 rience can avail. One man is as sure to do right as the 

 other to do wrong. There is an intuitive perception, 

 more animal than human, of what we may call "the 

 line of chase," with which certain sportsmen are gifted 

 by nature, and which, I believe, would bring them up 

 at critical points of the finest and%>ngest runs if they 

 came out hunting in a gig. This faculty, where every- 

 thing else is equal, causes A to ride better than B, but 

 is no less difficult to explain than the instinct that 

 guides an Indian on the prairie or a swallow across the 



