CHAPTER XXIV. 



A GRIND WITH THE GRAFTON. 



IT is not because I have no memories of smart gallops 

 with this well-known pack that I have preferred to 

 recall a run of the other sort a long and severe one, 

 trying both to horse and man. It so happens, how- 

 ever, that my old diaries record more than one of this 

 latter kind. Such were the two Mondays within 

 a month when the meet on each occasion was at 

 Adstone. Each time, too, we had a run of less than 

 an hour in the morning. On both occasions the run 

 began at two, the first ending with " Who-whoop ! 

 gone to ground," at Maidford at four-thirty. But of 

 this I can only claim to have been " in" the first half, 

 owing to want of condition in my second horse a 

 new one. On the second we ran fast for an hour and 

 five minutes, and then checked and probably changed 

 foxes. In ten minutes we were running again, and 

 ran on till the fox fairly ran us out of scent a little 

 to the south of Morton Pinkney. This run was also 

 two hours and a half. 



Then there was the time when, after a hot and 

 uninteresting day in the woodlands of Yardley Chase, 

 we got away in the evening with a game old dog-fox, 



