200 THE MEYNELL HOUNDS. [isys 



entertains his friends, high and low. The winners must 

 be hard indeed to please, if they do not go home delighted 

 with the prizes, of which a goodly selection to choose from 

 is set out on a table in the tent — a capital idea. But 

 this is only an item. Everything is done with the same 

 generosity and forethought. The men are excellently 

 mounted, the hounds are rapidly recovering from the 

 ravages of the distemper three years ago, which spared 

 neither old nor young, the country is full of foxes, and 

 though the new huntsman, Gosden, has yet to win his 

 spurs here, he comes with a good character from the 

 Cheshire. So, whoever takes up the task of adding the 

 remainder of the Master's term of office to these pages, 

 will probably have some brilliant seasons to chronicle. 



In Mrs. Fort the Master has an ideal helpmeet for a 

 Master of Hounds and a most able lieutenant, and there is 

 no one who has a greater affection for the Meynell country, 

 on the borders of which she was born and bred. 



The first item of interest came early, on October 5th, 

 when they ran from Eaton Wood to Wootton Lodge on 

 the other side of the Dove, but lost their fox. 



There were several good runs before it, but that of 

 December 12th was the first really worth recording. To 

 begin with, it was the wettest day possible ; the rain 

 simply poured down, and everybody was wet to the skin 

 before they got home. The meet was at Bramshall, and 

 Colonel Chandos-Pole, who had run down from Dorset- 

 shire to have a day or two with his former pack, was out. 

 Hounds got on the line of an outlying fox, who took them 

 into Carry Coppice. From there a brace of foxes went 

 away. Settling on one, hounds ran nicely by Field, across 

 the Blythe, through Sherratt's Wood, by Bird-in-the-hand, 

 and through Spotacre Nursery, into Moddershall Oaks, 

 where they lost him. It was a first-rate run — a nine-mile 

 point in fifty-five minutes. There is, unluckily, no record 

 of it which goes at all into details, but ]Mr. W. Eraser 

 Tytler was one of those who saw it well on Tittle-Tattle, a 

 four-year-old of Mr. Fort's, which never was any good 



