1898] GOOD RUN FROM CARRY COPPICE. 275 



Mr. Jervis Smith has had his fair share of sighing, so he is well entitled to his 

 meed of satisfaction — and a satisfaction it must be to find your friends a fox 

 who went away straight across the main Uttoxeter- Sudbury road, past Sudbury 

 Bottoms without touching them, straight as an arrow through the coppice, over 

 the Oak Lane, across Mr. Peacock's farm, and bore left-handed, leaving Malcoms- 

 ley on his left, up to the road from Cubley Stoop to Marston-Montgomery. Here 

 there were two lines — one fox, probably the hunted one, bearing left-handed 

 after he crossed the road, and the other going straight on as if for Cubley Gorse. 

 Unluckily it was too late to persevere with either, and hounds had to be stopped. 

 Let us hope to find this fox again with more daylight, and to run the good line 

 up to Snelston or Norbury, which he probably took. 



A wilder and wetter morning than Tuesday could hardly be imagined. The 

 hounds were at Loxley, and, by the law of contraries, of course they ran well. 

 They found in Carry Coppice, as a matter of course, and ran out at the top end 

 over the boggy lane. So violent was the wind that, though a second horseman 

 was seen to be halloaing with all his might, not a sound seemed to issue from 

 his lips. Once over the lane they ran nicely down wind right-handed up to the 

 road from Field to Stramshall station. This they crossed without dwelling, and 

 swimg left-handed down to the river, which they crossed to the discomfiture of 

 the field. The floods were out, and it was no easy matter to know where to 

 cross. A gentleman [Mr. Caldecott], whose back we ought all to know by this 

 time, galloped off and dashed into the flooded stream, from which, on the far 

 side, issued a cart track. Fortune favoured the brave, and he emerged safely. 

 It was a regular case of 



" How we plunged into the river, 

 Led and cheered by Jersey's call : 

 ' Come on ! ' he cried, ' the stream is wide 

 And deep enough for all.' " 



Into it plunged gentlemen averse to the taste of water, and soon to be up to their 

 necks in it. Into it went the official timekeeper [Mr. Peacock], whom of all 

 others we least can spare, and was lost to sight beneath the gurgling flood. But, 

 out of sympathy with the hunt, the stream disgorged its prey, and he landed 

 safely, dripping like a river-god, on the farther side, while his horse galloped off. 

 No doubt, later on, like the whipper-in in the Tarporley run, " By application of 

 spur rowel, he wiped him dry without a towel." Meanwhile the leaders overshot 

 the hounds, and had to come back to them. The latter, after a right-hand turn, 

 swung to the left, and crossed the road from Field to Withington — and then. 

 Well, whether the water confused our senses or what, the Avi-iter knoweth not, 

 but for a time geography was a dead science, till, groping about on the top of a 

 pit-hole near *Loxley, our fox was viewed fairly beat. So tired, indeed, was he 

 that he preferred to face uncertainty above ground to the certainty of suffocation 

 below it, and, leaving the open earths, toiled doggedly on till he met his death in 

 the open, fairly hunted down after a good forty minutes. Nothing worth noting 

 was done later. 



Thursday saw a large field at Burnaston, where the hospitable host enter- 

 tained every one. Burnaston Gorse, in spite of the good lying, did not hold a 

 fox, but the osier-bed on the sewage farm sustained its reputation. The fox 

 Avent away across the sewage farm, but hounds could not press him, nor were 

 they likely to do so with the stink of the sewage hi their noses. They carried a 



