42 2 LEAVES EROM A HUNTING DIARY 



his own mind when hounds are not in view, that man is Major Wilson ; 

 and quite right, too. If you have taken a day off duty, boxed your horse 

 by train at some expense, and got wet through into the bargain, to be 

 bilked at the last moment is, to say the least, a little provoking. So no 

 wonder, when all were coffee-housing in Man Wood's muddy lane, that the 

 active little grey mare could be seen picking her way daintily across the 

 prairie fields, which bisect the coverts, to reach the White Roothing side, 

 just as the hounds were thrown into the wood, having failed to put up a 

 fox in the rough fields beyond it. Knowing the Major rarely makes a 

 mistake, I luckily followed him. Do you know the little hand gate that 

 leads into the narrow bridle path that separates the Row Wood end from 

 the rest of the covert ? It was just here that a lovely lynx-eyed little fox, 

 such a green eye too, with one hound at his brush, broke from one covert 

 to the other, but not quick enough to escape the Major's eagle glance or 

 the roving eye of the ploughman. When it came to the holloaing the 

 ]\Iajor was really not in it with the ploughman, and I had to help him. 



"Marshall" 



"Marshall," a bright chesnut gelding, 162, by " Mare- 

 schaK' (a horse belonging to Lord Rosslyn) carries his owner, the 

 Rev. Laurence Capel-Cure, who when the Hounds meet in the 

 Roothings may generally be seen piloting one of his daughters 

 by one of the numerous short cuts he knows so well, in time for 

 the finish of many a good gallop. 



Our united efforts brought Bailey on the scene in a trice, muttering, 

 as he dashed through the gate, "Not a yard of scent." The hounds, how- 

 ever, tuned up a bit, and running down the covert for a hundred yards, 

 turned back, and then for a second whimpered and faltered at the boundary 



