284 THE MEYNE3.L HOUNDS. [1899 



help matters at all. Eventually hounds were thrown into Tomlinson's Comer, 

 and a fox — very likely a fresh one — took them over that nice bit of country 

 between the Forest Banks and Agardsley Park. Turning left-handed, they ran 

 into the Forest Banks just by the top of Marchington Cliff, and bustled him 

 along the lower side, full cry over Woodlands Cliff. But this good fox had had 

 enough of the woods, and seizing a chance of slipping away unobserved, away he 

 went across Mr. Moss's farm, setting his head bravely for Woodford. Hounds 

 came tearing out after him, and for a moment it looked, if they could only keep 

 up the pace, as if they would catch him off hand. But an undecided turn or 

 two on his part bothered them, and it was only at a fair holding pace that they 

 could run him to Stock Lane, where they checked. After making their own 

 cast up the lane, their huntsman cast down and over the lane, and hitting it off, 

 they hunted nicely across the Uttoxeter main road, and, leaving Brook House on 

 their right, carried the line into the fox covert at Woodford. Here, possibly, they 

 changed again. Anyhow, they ran out at the opposite end without any one 

 having seen the fox, and across to Jawbones' farm, where, luckilj', he did not 

 try the earths, which were open. Hence they hunted slowly across Mr. Kent's 

 form and over the main road to Uttoxeter not far from the lodge gates of Small- 

 wood. The fox had run the brook course parallel with the main road, in hopes, 

 apparently, of finding sanctuary in some friendly drain, and they stuck to the 

 line like a pack of otter hounds, till, at Mr. Preston's farmhouse, he gave it up as 

 a bad job and turned right-handed towards Woodlands, recrossing Stock Lane 

 not two hundred yards from where he crossed it on his outward journey, thus 

 completing his circle. It now looked any odds on his going back to the Woods, 

 but he knew a trick worth two of that, and, crossing the Uttoxeter road again 

 close to Marchington Vicarage, set his mask resolutely for the impenetrable 

 earth at Hound Hill, which he found open, and so saved his brush. It was a 

 good, old-fashioned, Staffordshire hunting run of an hour and fifty minutes from 

 Kingston Wood, or an hour and ten minutes from Tomlinson's corner. Hounds 

 richly deserved their fox, for they had stuck to him (or his deputies) for between 

 twelve or fourteen miles. There were various conflicting accounts of dead- 

 beaten foxes being seen, which can only be reconciled either on the supposition 

 that there were two or three beaten foxes, or that every fox that every one sees 

 is a beaten one in the eyes of the seer. 



Etwall was the fixture for Thursday, after the Hunt Ball, and there was a 

 goodly muster, including many strangers. It was a regular case of — 



"We had danced the night through 

 Till the candles burnt blue, 



But were up in the saddle next morn, 

 Once again with Tom Kance 

 In the daylight to dance 



To the music of hallo and horn ! " 



And a very forbidding morn it was, for there had been seven degi-ees of frost 

 in the night, and the ground was like iron except where it was like glass. Most 

 of us thought it was impossible to hunt, and we vowed one and all that nothing 

 would induce us to jump. But the Master, whose one object is to show that 

 sport to others, which he himself loves so well, swallowed his misgivings, and 

 decided to try. Sutton Gorse held a fox, who did not give us long to think 

 about the situation, but was off" like a shot. As soon as hounds settled to his 

 line they began to run as if they meant business, pointing for Trusley. A small 

 branch of the big brook set horses skating, slipping, and refusing, and probably 



