158 FOX-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



looked on. The fox was found, but took a short 

 ring and returned, when the hounds came to a 

 check close to where he was sitting upon his 

 horse. Will Beck, the huntsman pro tew.., not 

 being up with his hounds, the Baronet cast them 

 and recovered his fox. In three fields they 

 checked again, and Beck made a slow but by no 

 means brilliant cast. Sir Bellingham saw all 

 this from the hill, and, no longer a looker-on, he 

 cantered down to his pack and hit off his fox 

 again. Things still went on but awkwardly. 

 Another error was observed, when Sir Bellingham, 

 annoyed that a large field should be disappointed 

 of their sport when there was a possibility of 

 having it, took a horn from the whipper-in (for 

 he could not speak to them) and got to work again. 

 The hounds mended their pace ; down went the 

 shawl in the middle of a field. They improved 

 upon it ; down went the great-coat in another 

 field; then he stuck to his hounds in a long 

 hunting run of an hour and a half over a strongly 

 fenced country, and had got his fox dead beat 

 before him, when he was halloed away by one 

 of his own men to a fresh fox under the Newton 

 Hills. 



*' Now what is to be done ? The excitement 

 that had carried him thus far was all gone, and 

 it was all but whoo-hoop. With every appear- 

 ance of exhaustion, and a face as pale as if he 

 were dead, he sat himself down on a bank and 

 faintly exclaimed, ' How am I to get home. Heaven 

 only knows.' '' 



