64 THE RED DEER OE EXMOOR. 



and where they are within easy reach of the place 

 where the pack is kennelled. Some few, even now, 

 wait at the farm with the pack, as the majority used 

 to do years ago, but they lose a good deal of sport 

 sometimes. On a fine day it is no great hardship if 

 one has to spend an hour, or even more, talking to 

 one's friends, and there is, after all, generally some- 

 thing to see, though it may on occasion happen that 

 one may have nothing to do but to look down 

 into a deep combe clothed with dark oak coppice, 

 beneath whose leafy screen nothing can be seen, and 

 only an occasional twang of the horn or note of a 

 hound serves as a reminder that one is really out 

 hunting. The whip, a red dot on a hillside a mile 

 away, remains immovable, lunch-time comes, sand- 

 wiches are disposed of, or the more dainty dishes 

 which the fair occupiers of some carriage may 

 dispense. 



The Master sits immovable on his horse, and the 

 more impatient spirits vote stag-hunting a bore and 

 talk of going home. 



"Do you call this hunting?" asked a keen man 

 from the Midlands at a Cloutsham meet, " because I 

 don't. I have come twenty miles to the meet. I 

 have eaten three lunches, and I have not seen a 

 hound all day." He was in a different frame of mind 

 when last seen, just as it was getting dark, on the 

 far side of Farleigh Water, with a dead-beat horse 

 and two shoes off, asking the way to Minehead. 



Suddenly one hears hounds running in an 



