194 "you'd sell your soul for a fresh horse!" 



Boore's cheery holloa brings us all scampering up the centre 

 ride. Mr. Fernie is very anxious not to go on with a fresh fox, 

 but the fellow viewed away from the top end is undoubtedly 

 the hunted one, and, moreover, answers closely the description 

 of our original pilot ; so we plod on by Cold Overton, praying 

 for those second horses that don't somehow turn up. Hunting 

 in a right-handed ring, the pack come round to the left of 

 Knossington village, and then settle down to run their 

 hardest. ' Really, this is beyond a joke ! ' You'd sell your 

 soul for a fresh horse ; its a sheer impossibility to go on with 

 this! Millie pulls ' Curling Pin' up, its twenty miles she has 

 come if its a yard, and the mare has carried her well ; but there 

 is an end to all things, and she turns reluctantly homewards. 



A moment later I get 'Week End,' and push on with Captain 

 Holland to catch them near Owston cross-roads. With the far- 

 famed Marfield Vale before him, our gallant pilot looks like 

 going for ever, but the ladies have pushed him hard these last 

 few miles, and one field short of Peek's covert he doubles to 

 the right for Somerby. Surely the end cannot be far off now ! 

 They are actually in the same field with him by the village, 

 but a change has come over the sky, and under the heavy 

 black clouds scent has dwindled to nothing. 'You must handle 

 this fellow' I remark, as I slide off to unfasten a gate for 

 Thatcher, but he doesn't seem any too confident. There are 

 a dozen of us only in attendance now^, the lucky ones who got 

 their second horses, but the pack are on their noses as they 

 cross the bottom by the Somerby-Owston Road, and are pulled 

 up altogether on the two big fallows beyond. On the grass 

 again the line is clearer, and they push along merrily over the 

 road and up the hill ; on the top road there is news of our fox, 

 and we jump out at an easy place (we want them easy now, 

 by jove ! ), and keeping along the brow, get a glimpse of him 

 to the right of Cold Overton. A mile further Jack Boore, still 

 on his first horse, has viewed him again, heading for Orton 

 Park Wood ; Thatcher lifts the bitches along the road, and 

 hitting off the line they hunt slowly down the left of Lady 

 Wood and forward still till the fork roads, short of Braunstone, 

 are reached. There is not a murmur to proclaim a line beyond 

 the road, so Thatcher takes them back up the last field to 

 where there is a haystack and a drain. Besides the huntsman 

 and two hunt-servants there are six survivors : Mr. Gough, of 

 Belton ; Captains Porter and Holland ; young Mr. Greaves, of 

 Quenby ; a farmer and your humble servant, while young Mr. 

 Murray-Smith turns up a quarter-of-an-hour later. But the 



