43- LEAVES FROM A HUNTING DIARY 



we steered for the first wood, but he had not spied two reluctant horsemen 

 riding away from it, gazing after the rapidly disappearing panoply of the 

 chase, nor heard the whimper of the hound left in covert. Ah ! There 

 they were, some half-mile away ; and a pretty sight it was, too ; worth 

 even a thirty-mile ride to see. The rustics on the top of the straw stack 

 said, " You can easily catch them, they are not going so fast ; " but why 

 a big cloud of horsemen were riding away from the smaller band of work- 

 men who were sticking to hounds, we could not quite make out. Is it 

 always so in a bird's-eye view of the chase '? But quickly determining that 

 if they meant running there would be no overhauling them, and if they 

 didn't it was not worth while on a day so cold to court a ride back in the 

 dark, we struck into the first road, and reached home at 3.15, only 

 encountering two road menders at work on the fourteen miles of macadam. 

 Again we wondered, " Where were the bicyclists ? " 



We heard all about it next day at Church parade. How if we had 

 been a little more patient, a little less susceptible to anticipated chaff, we 

 might have dropped in for the best thing of the day— a hunt of forty 

 minutes from Poplars to Row Wood in the evening, when only a select 

 and family circle were left to enjoy it, the biting wind having fairly driven 

 the rest of them home — not excepting the man -■'■ who jumped a big gate, or 

 those who got sworn at for chasing the fox without the hounds. 



End of Vol. I. 



Mr. Docwra. 



