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CHAPTER XVIII. 



MR. fort's last season AS DEPUTY- MASTER — ACCOUNTING 

 FOR SEVEN FOXES IN ONE DAY — SIR PETER WALKER's 

 POINT-TO-POINT RACES — MR. FORT's RESIGNATION — 

 HUNT MEETING — THE LADIEs' CRICKET MATCH. 



1896-1897. 



This season suffered by comparisou with the one which 

 preceded it. The latter was extraordinary, the former was 

 nothing out of the common. Moreover, it was the last 

 one of Mr. Fort's Deputy-Mastership. He had filled a 

 difficult position with tact and judgment, and fortune had 

 smiled on his term of office, while that man must have 

 been thin-skinned indeed to whom any word of his had 

 given offence. A pleasanter or more courteous Master no 

 one could hope to go hunting with. 



As early as October 3rd an old fox afforded a capital 

 gallop of forty minutes, fast, from Bagot's Park by Hart's 

 Coppice, and the Hare's Back, through Lord's Coppice, 

 straight through the Woods without a check, by Housalem 

 Coppice, just touching Kingston Wood, left-handed over the 

 Blythe, through Chartley Moss, to ground near Grindley 

 Station. If the rest of the season had been up to this 

 standard there would have been little to complain of. 



On November 10th, when the meet was at Newton 

 village, six horses were badly cut in their fetlock-joints by 

 sinking through a broken drain in the culvert of the 

 hunting-gate at Swan's Moor. Mr. Gisborne's horse had 

 to be shot, and Mr. Power's was permanently disabled. 



