Belvoir Hunt. 109 



tlie High-dyke, where was the first check of 

 any account, and as Gillard was assisting 

 hounds the country presented a spectacle of 

 rampaging steeds and discomfited riders, the 

 *^ shilling " men reaping a rich harvest, the 

 number of falls up to this point estimated on 

 good authority to have been over twenty. 

 Cooler hunting followed, with the line foiled 

 by hares as hounds kept working on past 

 Abney Wood to the precincts of Ropsley, 

 where the fox became more difficult to trace, 

 and eventually ran them out of scent. The first 

 part of the run was very fast, with slower hunt- 

 ing to the end of an hour, and a further addition 

 to the list of casualties, which, though the 

 country was not over stiff, must have been 

 reckoned at between thirty and forty, a number 

 appearing almost incredible, excepting it be 

 attributable to the varied characteristics of 

 the steeds that had been requisitioned for the 

 day, for there was scarcely any description of 

 the noble animal from three hundred guineas 

 to the ^5 screw that was not represented. 



The presence of royalty at Belvoir on 

 Friday, the 3rd of March, attracted a brilliant 

 assembly under the battlements of the castle, 



