124 LEAVES FROM A HUNTING DIARY 



" How trifling a cause will oft lose us a run ! 

 From the find to the finish how few see the fun ! 

 A mischance, it is call'd, when we come to a halt ; 

 I ne'er heard of one who confess'd it a fault ; 

 Yet we're all of us tailors in turn — " 



sang Egerton Warburton. 



Now comes the interesting question — only to be answered by those who 

 fairly got away with liounds — whether it is more provoking to be left 

 behind in the middle of a rim, having successfully overcome the principal 

 difficulty of getting away from a big woodland in a fog, and having fairly 

 held hounds for 15 minutes in the open at best pace, or not to have got 

 away at all ? It is a question that will frequently crop up when you hunt 

 in a fog, since for one that gets away with hounds five will be left behind, 

 and the most trifling impediment to your progress out of the common run, 

 such as an awkward brook, a locked gate, a wired gap (we put such cer- 

 tainties as canals and railways out of the question), and those who have got 

 away, will join the nomad band of discontented explorers, and scientific 

 enquirers oi have you seen the hounds ? and to them, and to those who have 

 not seen a yard of the run, will come home some very searching questions. 

 A good many ifs ; the " If" this time with a very big I for those who did 

 get away. If I had only jumped in and out of that plantation (Hagmore) 

 with hounds I should have been all right, and so you would. But if you 

 hoped, nay, almost relied on seeing hounds again as you rounded the 

 spinney, you made a mistake such as Hervey Foster never would have 

 perpetrated, for if he once got away with hounds in a fog he glued himself 

 on to them. But up to here it must have been a rare nice gallop, and little 

 question in my mind, since half a loaf is better than no bread, that it were 

 better to have ridden up to that point to the music of hotmds, as their 

 phantom forms flitted through the mist, than not to have started at all, 

 and only to have caught the faint chime of hounds coming back unattended 

 into Beachetts, and to mark them divide, as 5! couple struck the country 

 beyond the woods towards Coopersale, and ran on to Gaynes Park. 



A fox even may lag behind too long in a fog, especially if he makes no 

 allowance for the fact that the further he goes the warmer his jacket 

 becomes. 'Twas a pretty sight when hounds hit on the drag of a crafty, 

 dodging, stay-at-home-if-possible customer, near the gravel pits just as we 

 were en route for Weald Coppice. 'Twas cheering to gallop through the 

 woods to their babbling chorus as they spelt out every yard of twisting line 

 through the Forest into Gaynes Park, and crossing the muddy lane, got on 

 better terms with him in Ongar Park. 'Twas better galloping in the open 

 towards North Weald station than whirling through it in the Ongar 

 express ; but 'twas maddening to lose hounds for the second time in the fog 

 as they turned back over the line beyond North Weald and swept back to 

 the big woods — not a soul near them except Jack, who had not crossed the 

 line, and only a porter on the metals to confirm the intelligence as we 

 galloped under the bridge beyond Ongar Park Farm. At the top end of 

 the woods many fresh prints of horses' feet going in the direction of Toot 

 Hill made us again think hounds were having a stinger in the open. If so, 

 little chance of catching them ; so home through the woods past the grin- 

 ning keepers. Quite a bevy of them — quite a chorus of " Never saw 

 hounds streaking along so fast in my life," " Gone at least twenty minutes." 

 " Must have nearly reached Whitechapel by this time," chimed in that 

 veteran Wright. " Only one with them, couldn't say who, for he swept 

 by like a spectre horseman." 



Up with your coat collars, Messrs. Swire and Smith, and home for T, 



