Atcham Bridge — A quick Twelve Minutes. 51 



Wednesday, at Atcliam, brought lots of people as usual, 

 and floods of rain. Attingliam, for the first time this 

 year, held no fox. Eavenshaw Gorse, only a fine outlying 

 doe, that broke in good style. Upton Withy Bed put our 

 shivering carcases into quicker pulsation. A fox was 

 undoubtedly at home. He ran rather a risk of being- 

 chopped, but the field behaved well, and he slipped away 

 at the upper end. Such a rush down the long field 

 between the railway and the covert, only to discover a 

 newly-erected wire fence defying us at the end of it. 

 There was nothing for it but to poke through a nasty 

 place at the corner in single file — a most trying ordeal — 

 made worse by a cannon and a fall — confusion worse 

 confounded. Poor fellow ! How I pitied that good 

 sportsman, as his loose horse nearly pitchforked me under 

 the railway arch, and careered away for the next mile, first 

 baulking one man and then another. I wonder if he has 

 ever been recovered ! But to the hunt, my friends. This 

 squeezing through the neck-of-the-bottle business gave a 

 scattered start to the field, and the hounds ran like 

 lightning, parallel with the Tern, over a country that had 

 to be jumped, up to Withington Wood. Twelve minutes, 

 it was said. JSTo end of men found the ditches too blind 

 and deep, and loose horses kept increasing ad libitum. I 

 must say that a veteran bit of scarlet and white cut out 

 the work, with another scarlet and chesnut and a black 

 and chesnut very handy. Through Withington Wood the 

 hounds ran, and down the meadows to the Koden, where 

 a fenced-in bridge caused a barrier, until five 2>airs of 

 brawny arms shivered its timbers, and then its planks 

 were found so rotten that each horse in turn dropped 

 through, more or less. This danger passed, hounds 

 checked on the plough, and scarce owned a line beyond 

 the canal near Sugden. Whether our fox ran the canal 

 bank right handed, or whether he went on to Forester's 

 Plantation, and the pelting rain obliterated his where- 

 abouts, this deponent sayeth not ; but all agreed that 

 that first spin was worth doing a few more times in our 

 lives, while health and strength remained with us. Holly 

 Coppice, Haughmond Hill, and Longnor refused to add 

 to the day's pleasure, and those who reached home dry 

 must have been very few. 



Thursday I know nothing about ; but Sir Watkin's 

 Wednesday, at New Street Lane, was a terrible failure. 



