JACK TURNER HUNTS THE HOUNDS 255 



grass on the southern borders of the county — though I fancy one hare had 

 a very narrow squeak, which hounds ran three times round one of my fields 

 just as, hke the Baron in the fable, I had called for my boots preparatory 

 to sallying out for a ride after luncheon. They do say — but who said it, 1 

 must leave you to guess for yourselves — that it was no hare that brought 

 harriers to the outskirts of a country town, but that a very fine specimen of 

 the vulpine race was found in the open on one of the farms on the Copped 

 Hall Estate, and taught a lesson in getting away from hounds which may 

 stand him in good stead on some future occasion. 



I now come to Monday, a day that we cannot compare with its pre- 

 decessor, for scent was against us ; but all the same we had a very pleasant 

 day's sport, and a very pleasant day in the open, for the sun shone out of a 

 cloudless sky, reminding one more of a day in early spring than mid-winter, 

 and all who came to the meet at Myless Lodge looked as if they had come 

 on pleasure bent. 



Mrs. Wythes drove all the way from Copped Hall — a banking country 

 having no terrors for her, in spite of having been brought up in a flying one 

 with Its stiff upstanding fences. Essex is a very trappy country, full of 

 pitfalls, but very easy after the Belvoir Vale. Mr. Charles Green's eagle 

 eye detected a fox stealing out of some cabbages on land in Mr. Tyndale 

 White's preservation, and, taking us over the Stondon road, we had some 

 of the point-to-point fences before we reached Thoby Wood, where we lost 

 this fox. A very delightful country to ride over, but not a nice one to be 

 left behind in. What do you say, Mr. Ford ? * We were both in the same 

 boat, you know. 



A longish draw from this point through all the Kelvedon and Dudbrook 

 coverts, with the prospect of a certainty at the Osiers — Sir Charles 

 Smith's. How glossy the varmint looked as he came away in full view of 

 us all, and tacked across Albyns Park, and after providing us with a good 

 long, muddy gallop up to and round Curtis Mill Green, afforded the oppor- 

 tunity before he was lost of showing how very easy it is when you seek for 

 an easier place in a fence to get left behind. Seeking an easier place in a 

 fence when hounds turned back from the Green towards Bishop's Hall, I 

 soon found myself in company — very good company, too, Mr. Waltham, 

 Mr. Steele, Mr. Raphael, Mr. Savill ; you'll admit this is not personal ; 

 and we hadn't a timber jumper between us when we came to the railed-up 

 lane, and Mrs. Bennett put us all to the blush as she flew over. 'Tis true, 

 Mr. Savill, you rode at those rails several times ; they bent and they 

 cracked, but break they would not, and we left you still at them when we 

 turned ignominiously away — is not confession good for the soul ? — only to 

 get wired up, and to see Mr. Waltham in a bird cage, and hounds a mile 

 away, and not recovered until they checked in Crane's Wood, by which 

 time the fun was all over, though hounds held a line over the river to 

 Shalesmore, bringing some of us two miles nearer home, a thing to be 

 grateful for. 



I ought to have mentioned that Bailey was laid up with one of his 

 annual colds, and that in his enforced absence Jack carried the horn in a 

 very efficient manner. Even a huntsman is not exempt from colds — only, in fact, 

 those lucky individuals who, according to a writer in last week's Spectator, 

 can travel like Nansen in lands where there are no colds to catch. Did not 

 he get a bad one the moment he reached the confines of civilisation, with 

 its millions of hungry microbes ? 



Mr. Ford Barclay got down here. I lost a leather and I had to help F. B. to remount. — Ed. 



