140 LEAVES FROM A HUNTING DIARY 



Dobbs Wood again. Perhaps pick up our hunted fox. Hounds were 

 soon through it, and on their way to Lord's, when (thanks to the keen 

 sight of Mr, Usborne), a crafty old varmint, which had better have lain 

 still another minute, was viewed stealing away. The twang of Mr. Green's 

 horn brought ]>ailey and hounds back to the scene post-haste. What a 

 pace they went to Garnetts !^ — too good, our premier feather-weight'^ 

 thought, to shirk a Roothing ditch guarded by iron sheep hurdles on the 

 landing side. The rattle of hoof on iron, and both were safely over. 

 Through Garnett's, not dwelling, they kept driving on, crossing the High 

 Easter and Pleshey road, and taking us nearly fence for fence, over the 

 Red Coat Point-to-Point course of last year. Good Easter was nearly 

 reached when our fox took a sharp turn back almost the very same line he 

 had come. 



Hounds were now running, eager lor blood, and close on his tracks, 

 the many twists and turns he made, which huntsman and pack patiently 

 imravelled, clearly indicating how the game was going. The conclusion 

 on the High Easter and Pleshey road was witnessed by at least three 

 ladies — Mrs. L. Pelley, Miss Horner, and a stranger — who, all credit to 

 them, rode every yard of the run. Of the fifty odd of the sterner sex who 

 witnessed the final scene, it would be invidious to select any as having 

 borne more than his share of the burden and heat of the day ; but certainly 

 when hounds went fastest, and fences came thickest, a certain skewbald horse\ 

 shot like a meteor to the front. 



It is not often that it falls to one's lot to chronicle two such good days' 

 sport as last Saturday and IMonday. My feeble pen fails entirely to do 

 justice to them. Saturday's game took place on the plough. Monday's 

 work was on the grass — about twenty miles as the crow ilies, a fair stretch 

 of country intervening between the two scenes. A fox from Nasing Park 

 at 1 1. 15, if hounds could have owned him (which they utterly failed to do), 

 would have thrown late comers. Galley Hill skirters, and Nasing Coppice 

 expectants entirely out of it. In the preliminary excitement of a fox away, 

 which left not a trace behind, Jim Cockayne's horse gave him a nasty 

 cropper over an insignificant piece of timber. 



Back to Nasing Coppice, and a fox was viewed away at once in the 

 direction of Galley Hill. He obtained a good start, as hounds were some 

 time before they came out of covert ; but when once clear of it, hounds 

 drove along at a good pace for Deer Park, straight through it, and on 

 through Shatter Bushes, away down the hill for Obelisk Wood, which was 

 not touched. From here to Waltham Abbey nothing but grass and easy 

 fences to keep you from touch of hounds, who were travelling fast enough 

 to leave you two fields to the bad if you stayed to open an obstinate gate or 

 to catch a riderless horse, and to lose you your chance altogether if you 

 courted a cropper or toyed with a fence. W^ithin a field of the New Inn at 

 W^altham Abbey the fox was running in view, and you would have given 

 him another three fields at the outside for leading the dance ; but he was as 

 deceptive as a stout stag refreshed from a bathe in a stream. 



A taste of the River Lea, or the smell of the gunpowder works, must 

 have put new life into him. Running the banks of the river for about a 

 mile and a half, he took a line to the right, through Monkhams. And no 

 better compliment could he have paid to its owner, now Master of the East 

 Essex, who, with his two brothers, had chosen this day for a peep at their 

 old country. Would they were always with us is a wish that will find 

 ready echo in the heart of every follower of the the E.H. Down to and 



* Roly Bevan. + Mr. }. Longbourne's. 



