44 HUNTING AND SPOBTING NOTES. 



yards of Vales Wood, where there vras a brief and 

 -Qnaccountable check to which Eejnard probably owed 

 his life. 



'' The shades of night were failing fast, it being a 

 quarter to five, and a cloudy evening, but Thatcher — who 

 had now fairly lost himself, but was directed by Mr, Darby 

 — tried the hounds along the Little Ness — Ruyton road, 

 on the chance of picking up the scent, if our friend had 

 really made for Vales Wood. Our bloodthirsty hopes 

 were once more raised, as the hounds spoke to him again, 

 in the hedge on the left hand side of tiie road at the top 

 of the hill near the Clife. They hunted him through 

 Vales Wood, and, though some few of us were terribly 

 " boffled" by a wire fence in the corner, which seemed to 

 have been the express invention of the Enemy, we at last 

 trampled it under our feet, and, getting out and crossing 

 the little sandy lane that turns up to the Clife, continued 

 the chase, leaving Nessclif: a quarter of a mile to our right. 

 But it was obvious to us all, that night would spread its 

 friendly wings to cover poor Reynard's retreat, and there 

 being then a slight check, Thatcher, discreet for his 

 hounds, and merciful to our gallant fox and our 

 exhausted horses, drew of£ on his weary tramp of sixteen 

 miles homewards. 



'^Thus endel a run, remarkable, not for its pace, which 

 was, except along the Perry, singuhirly slow, the scent 

 being very bad on the ploughed land, but for the sure and 

 steady way in which the hounds hunted an apparently 

 inexhaustible fox, for the unusual time of exactly one 

 hour and fifty minutes." 



No news of Sir Watkin's day at Garden has reached 

 me, bat I have a red-letter day to tell of with the Al- 

 brighton on Monday, from Church Eaton, which I must 

 reserve till next week. It is clear that Mr. Charles Morris, 

 of Oxton, has some good foxes at Wood Eaton as well as 

 about Bickley Wood, and as an ex-M.E.H., he still does 

 his best to keep up the noble sport on two sides of the 

 county. He was himself absent acting as High Sheriff 

 at Shrewsbury, but I know he will be pleased to hear that 

 his friends had two excellent runs, and werf very much 

 delighted at the way his good foxes ran. We are in for 

 some sport now, I am sure, if only the wind will keep 

 down in the south-east, with this moist atmosphere. 



I ought to have mentioned that the Ludlow have been 

 covering themselves with glory. In fact, I know of no 



