30 BUNTING AND SPORTING NOTES. 



push open the door and let it close after him. Now it was: 

 time to leave the foot people, and try Preston Gubbald. 

 Coffee housing had been the order of the day, but a find 

 in Preston Gubbald somehow or other generally means 

 business. It is such a good scenting covert. Away he 

 went on the Hardwicke side, while another broke on the 

 other side (I saw six foxes during the day), skirted the 

 Black Birches, and up the high ground at Nevett's- 

 plantation. Here, sharply to the left, he brought his- 

 long line of blowing pursuers to Pimhill, barely touching . 

 the side of it, he took us by the Gubbalds Church, and ran 

 a complete ring outside the scene of our departure. He • 

 would have gone to Hardwicke, I think, but the road 

 was full of carriage people, and he had to come back to 

 the wood, where the chorus became deadlier every 

 instant until, to save his brush, he pushed himself into a- 

 a rabbit hole, from which he was dragged out and killed.. 

 How often I wish I had an inventive turn of mind ! 

 To those that have, here is a grand chance, not only of a 

 fortune, but of the united gratitude of the hunting-lady 

 world. Think of that alone, and do something to make 

 the pommels of a lady's saddle or her riding habit be 

 separable quantities, when desired ! Thrice this week 

 have accidents happened to ladies from getting hung up 

 in their saddles in our hunting circle. Fate has, indeed, 

 been too cruel to one, who has often tempted it success- • 

 fully, but who twice last week had to part coDipany with 

 her skirt, as her only safety valve — luckily in her case it 

 was so — or her accident would have been terrible. More 

 terrible than the enacted tableaux of a shorn lamb, which 

 some kind friends, and a veiled prophet of Korassan were 

 said to have witnessed ! In the third case, on Saturday, . 

 the catastrophe might have been still more serious, but 

 for the behaviour of a favourite horse, who refused to 

 be frightened, while its rider hung over on the right side, . 

 firmly dangling from the pommel, and the habit refused 

 to give way, or unloose its frightened burden. It took 

 several pairs of strong arms and hands to set matters 

 right, and we all join in exclaiming " All's well that ends 

 well," and thus ending this year, 1885. 



