304 LEAVES FROM A HUNTING DIARY 



Very quickly threading its outskirts for some half-a-dozen fields the 

 fox set his head for Barrington Hall, and foiled in this attempt, swung 

 back to the right over a very heavy country, intersected with some par- 

 ticularly grassy ditches straight in the face of the sun. No one down, I 

 think. Twas well in the ruck, but all the rear contingent shoving for the 

 same gaps. No ! half a minute ! The Parson taking his own line on the 

 chesnut, I can't say for how long, and Mr. Furze on the old roan mare* 

 picking himself off his head; she never used to fall, but, weight for age, 

 three stone extra is a heavy impost — this en passant. 



Horses swerved out from the traction engine at the bottom of the big 

 field, at least all those who had funked the brook where hounds had 

 crossed. A nice judicious little check on the Heath road, and then 

 another turn to the left, and a capital view of a fox through an open gate- 

 way making for the mustard field, and hounds tearing away by themselves 

 on the right, and not going after that fox after all, as many of the riders 

 did, but sticking to their hunted one and leading us over some very 

 interesting brooklets — the huntsman's horse skipping them with ease, 

 Capt. Bruce's jumping short every time in his wake ; so to the Heath, and 

 a kill in the farmyard. 



No ! yo-ondcy he goes, with that peculiar curl of his brush which only a 

 good fox, and a hunted one, has ; back out of the road, up the steep bank 

 with Mr. Sedgwick, away down the meadows toward Barrington. Again 

 they settled to run with a will, crossing the road at the back of Hatfield 

 town, up a steep bank into the stubble field beyond. They tore along 

 without a check until reaching a big newly ploughed field near Lancaster 

 springs, they faltered for a moment in the hedgerow just beyond a handy 

 fold. Jack and some thirty more couldn't resist it, and were shut out from 

 the rest of the gallop. Not so Bailey, Capt. Bruce, Mr. Cooper, Messrs. 

 Horner (father and son), Mr. G. Sewell, and many more, who kept hounds 

 in view as they ran parallel with the brook, crossing it just below the 

 wooded heights of Down Hall. They ran on without a whmiper, for they 

 were running to kill if the fox could not gain the big earths. 



Nothing but the sound turf which fringes these hanging woods for half 

 a mile enabled the leaders to keep hounds in view, while the woods soon 

 echoed with the thunder of a hundred hoofs as horses were urged on at 

 their topmost speed ; then shriller than any pibroch rang the whoop. Not, 

 my tender-hearted friends, over the mangled corpse of a good fox, but 

 over the open earths in which he had found a sanctuary, having beaten 

 liounds, fair and square, in this rattling forty-five minutes. 



Mr. Swire had the misfortune to lose a very valuable horse just at the 

 end of the run — a broken blood-vessel, I believe, the cause. I don't think 

 they found again. Leaving early, in company with several other horsemen 

 after the first gallop, a careless, happy group, we little thought that we 

 had exchanged our last greetings, said a final farewell to one of our 

 cheeriest comrades. f It seems too sad to relate, too hard to tell, that 

 one who had endeared himself to all with whom he was brought in 

 contact should on the ver}' threshold of life, when all seemed bright before 

 him, be snatched so suddenly, so fearfully from our midst. The old story : 

 a small fence, a riderless horse : a helpless figure on the cold brown earth, 

 silent friends proffering help, no pain, but God help the man with a broken 

 back. Struck down on Friday, he lingered to mid-day on Saturday, 

 conscious almost to the last. 



• Formerly the property of the author. t Mr. C. Meyer. 



