RIDING ON EXMOOR. 355 



discussion as to the demerits of some other lady's 

 habit, or the vagaries of the speaker's motor-car. 



Given room, and given a chance to see and hear 

 where hounds are, and what they are doing — in short, 

 to do on behalf of his followers what they distrust 

 their own power of doing for themselves, and none 

 of the many good local sportsmen will for an instant 

 grudge the assistance he may be able to give the 

 stranger. 



It is no easy matter to keep hounds in sight on the 

 open moor when they run hard, and the only way to 

 do so is to follow the old rule and get down to the 

 bottom of every combe as quickly as the hounds, 

 for they are sure to beat any horse going up the 

 other side. 



The pull the local man has over the stranger is 

 that when they have climbed to the surface of the 

 moor again the former knows pretty nearly where 

 hounds should be, while the stranger has to search 

 the whole expanse of moorland and may easily miss 

 seeing them. There is no place like Exmoor for 

 learning in a practical way how very small a fold 

 in the ground will hide deer and hounds and riders 

 from view. There is always, however, this consola- 

 tion for the stranger : the staghounds rarely kill a stag 

 under an hour, while the majority of the runs last 

 nearer two, and sometimes extend to five or six 

 hours ; so that a mistake, however bad, is not 

 necessarily fatal, as it is in a racing-pace gallop of 

 thirty minutes over a grass country. Even if hounds 



