SHORT, BUT SWEET 2>o7 



horses had fairly got their second wind before being called upon 

 to play their part in a stirring three-mile point in 15 minutes. 

 Berwick Wood after Knightsland was the sequence, and it 

 offered scant shelter from the smart snow shower which the 

 biting north-east wind swept over us. Fortunately of short 

 duration, it had spent itself ere P)ailey had thrown his hounds 

 into the twin wood in the hollow, jack had galloped on to 

 the further end, reaching it just in time to view a real varmint 

 away. 



Hounds swarnied out together, and settled to the line with 

 rapturous chorus. Running the next covert on the right, they 

 had cleared the wood quicker than jack on the grey could 

 gallop through, though onl\- impeded 1)\" two small hand-gates, 

 and were a field away before the last of us had swung the 

 bridle gate on the outside of the wood — one fence out of 

 plough into plough, where a mould-covered tree-stump offered 

 firm landing. With hounds well away on our right driving 

 along in the direction of Greensted, they suddenly swung right 

 across our bows over an awkward bottom (some drainers at 

 work had evidently turned our fox). With only one feasible 

 place, the advantage of a small field fully asserted itself; one 

 after another, no one funked jimiping through the boughs on 

 the landing side into another ploughed field. Galloping up it, 

 we struck the road, out of which the Master had already jumped 

 before we could open the gate of ingress. 



Leaving Berwick Farm on our left, hounds stretched along- 

 over some billowy grass, converging to a corner where the 

 fence ran thick and blind. It would take a rum 'un to stop 

 Mr. Collin's bay ; and with the ease of a girl taking her 

 skipping lesson he left it behind, as the huntsman and Captain 

 Bruce struggled through on the right, and turning sharp right- 

 handed over another ditch-faced bank into a ])loughed field 

 down which the Master, Captain Wilson, Mr. Swire, Mr 

 Barclay, the Admiral, and Mr. Price were making all the {)lay 

 they could (for hounds were going a rare bat). Another road, 

 I believe a gate into it, but can't remember; but I just caught 

 sight of I\ir. Swire jumping out at once. Did he corner 

 himself? I fancy not! But while the huntsman and half- 

 a-dozen more of us were fumbling with that gate out ot the 

 road, the hounds were stealing away over the grass towards 

 Little Tawney Hall. A rustic^had viewed our fox, and though 

 hounds didn't require his assistance, we did at the gate into the 

 lane, for the bars were broken, and he would persist in trying 

 to open it the wrong way. 



22 



