246 LEAVES FROM A HUNTING DIARY 



'Tis hard luck not finding foxes in your coverts when you have taken 

 the trouble to preserve them, must have been in the mind of the owner of 

 the Copped Hall coverts as one after the other was drawn blank ; but 

 that they are there we have too many shooters' testimony to doubt. But 

 foxes like quiet, and a covert shot through a week before it is drawn is 

 generally tenantless when it is tried. 



But we were in for no blank day, and before the night fell the large 

 field that had assembled in the morning had galloped and jumped to their 

 heart's content, and only ten were left to tell the tale : Mr. Arkwright, 

 Mr. C. E. Green, Mr. F. Green and his son, Mr. R. Y. Bevan, Mr. F. 

 Barclay, Mr. G. Buxton, and Messrs. W. and A. Sewell. 



The same old story. Galley Hill foxes scoring all the tricks in a 

 rubber with Bailey and his dogs. Two packs and a rising moon, methinks, 

 before Bailey shall call four by honors, and sleep in peace after a Galley 

 Hill day. 



The game commenced at 1.30 with a rattling lead from Obelisk Wood, 

 and did not finish before 4 p.m., when it was too dark to see the pips, and 

 Bailey lost hand after hand as the game went on, no matter how he 

 shuffled and dealt. All went against him, but the onlookers had some fun 

 as they followed the play. 



But from Obelisk Wood to Galley Hill they had to gallop to see it ; 

 Mr. and Mrs. Grossman, Mr. Giles, with the Master, and one or two others 

 with quick horses, occupying the front row ; Mr. Jones and Mr. Tyndale 

 White flipping over a tempting lean-away gate in their keenness not to 

 be left behind as hounds ran through the spinney short of Galley 

 Hills. 



From here the play became so intricate that the mildest and most 

 soothing cigar did not help to unravel its mysteries or solve its 

 problems. 



BoXING-DAY. 



Not often can the hunting man follow his favourite pastime on this 

 annual festival : generally is he called upon to risk his limbs on skates, or 

 watch the gliding throng that recklessly courts disaster on the treacherous 

 ice which he is too timid to venture upon. 



So let it be written in red letters — a Boxing-day that may be enjoyed 

 in a pink coat. 



Each fashionable hunt in the kingdom has — nay, must have — its own 

 special rendezvous for a Boxing-day meet, with its large attendant 

 crowd, and the further such trysting place is away from a railway station 

 the better it adapts itself for this particular festival. 



Blackmore has no rivals as a rendezvous for a Boxing-day meet, for 

 in the limitless woodlands, with their interminable rides with which its 

 name is so closely associated, even a Bank Holiday crowd is soon 

 swallowed up. Boxing-day of 1898 witnessed a big gathering at Black- 

 more. Foot people in crowds, ready to who-oop and holloa if a mouse 

 broke covert. Boys in shoals, on ponies, clipped, or undipped, fiery, 

 untamed, or quiet as sheep, it mattered not what they bestrode ; eager 

 enthusiasm was written on their rosy faces, for was it not for many their 

 first hunt, and for most the exchange of a hard bench for the yielding 

 pig-skin — and the swing of a hunting crop in lieu of a steel pen. 



Cyclists and carriages of every description in motley array. 



Outside the High Woods they found a fox, and rattled him across half- 

 a-dozen fields or more to Thoby Wood at such a pace that when they 

 shortly afterwards brought him to book we hugged ourselves in the vain 

 delusion that there was a burning scent in spite of the blue mist and flashy 

 wind that came up in angry puff's from the south. 



