302 The Hunting Field With Horse and Hound 



slots. This adds greatly to the interest and enables all to feel 

 that they are personally engaged in the chase. Often a gentle- 

 man or lady who is driving to hounds, is of great assistance to 

 the hunt. These footprints are very carefully studied. It is 

 surprising how some of the ladies can carry in their mind's eye 

 most accurate details as to size and shape, and slight variations 

 between right and left fore-foot, or a flaw in the shell of a liind- 

 foot, in fact the slightest irregularity in anything about the 

 footmarks. 



While we are carefully examining these details, the relays 

 of hounds and hunters have stationed themselves as the Master 

 has directed. At a signal from the Master the "Tufters" are 

 slipped, and away they go into the forest, cheered on by voice 

 and horn to the lair of their game. 



"What Ho! There! Look to our stallion!" ISTo longer can 

 he be called a lumbering cart horse, for at the sound of the 

 horns, he rears in liis track until it looks as if he would surely 

 turn somersault backwards into our laps. This accounted 

 for the unusually long traces. Had he been properly hitched, 

 something must have given way at this extraordinary per- 

 formance. 



Our driver was wearing a smock coat, blouse, or whatever 

 it may be called. It was puckered across the breast, and 

 gathered in about the low fitting neck, and came well down 

 below the knees. From beneath its ample folds he now draws 

 what in the Western country would be called a "black snake" 

 lash (a limber black leather cutting- whip) about four feet 

 long, which he flourished about our heads with a crack like the 

 report of a gun. At this, the great stallion comes down to the 

 earth again; then, with a wild challenging neigh, that fairly 

 shakes the forest, the noble beast springs into a canter with his 

 first stride. Talk about riding on a gun-carriage of light 

 artillery, or on a fire engine at full gallop, or being run away 

 with in a lumber wagon over a corduroy road, all of wliich the 



