2i)8 THE MEYNELL HOUNDS [1899 



the steel is out of the run, and out of the fox too by this time, and he is creeping 

 about scentless, while the lumtsman is pitting human brains against his. Man, 

 the many-counselled one, is after thee, thou robber of hen roosts. And in this 

 case thy cunning is no match for his. In vain hast thou turned, twisted, and 

 doubled, do\vn this deep ditch, and up that, along under the river bank, and hast 

 crept by every depression in the ground, into thy last fancied stronghold. Vixen, 

 and Verity, Wonderful, Lullaby, and Witchcraft are on your tracks, and death is 

 not far off. These same lake banks have heard the who-whoop sounded over 

 many of thy brethren, and they shall hear it over thee. Hark ! they have him. 

 No ! Yonder he goes. One last effort in the open, but he dare not face it, and 

 turns back to meet his fate, and to yield his bobbed and draggled brush to be 

 carried home as a prized trophy, and kindly memento of the huntsman, by the 

 little boy [Master Basil Randall] on the skewbald pony. " Is it a vixen? " some 

 one asked the huntsman. " No, sir, quite the contrary," was the dry rejoinder. 

 The afternoon was spent in running backwards and forwards about Eaton Wood 

 and the adjoining coverts. 



" Life," as Tom Brown somewhere remarks, " is not all beer and skittles," 

 and, as in life, so in hunting, for Tuesday was to Monday as small beer is to 

 champagne. A small field met hounds at Yoxall, and jogged off Blithbury way 

 in good spirits and sunny weather. Wliy deal with a long string of disappoint- 

 ments? Not till they got to the Brakenhurst did hounds find a fox, and him 

 they lost after a very short excursion out Yoxall way. After drawing Byrkley 

 Gorse, Jackson's Bank, and Dolesfoot blank, they went home. 



Thursday, at Willington, was a horse of quite a ditterent colour, as our 

 American cousins say, and yet it does not lend itself to lengthy description. 

 There was a thick fog in the morning, a hot sun afterwards, and a scent all day, 

 but rather of the brilliant than the holding order, as was proved when hounds 

 got away on the back of rather a poor-looking little fox at Burnaston Gorse. 

 The leading couples for a great part of the pack were some time in getting up, 

 ran at a great pace, past the Haycock, and into the little plantation on the 

 sewage farm, where they checked ; but the fox had been viewed away, and even 

 over the sewage farm they could run nicely. Over the Burton road they went, 

 and just beyond a lady [Mrs. Dngdale] had a narrow escape of a bad accident 

 through the saddle turning round. At the spinny by Mr. Waite's farm they 

 checked, but a man on a cart had seen the fox, and they got on to his line, and 

 ran Iiim past Spilsbury's Plantation, and quite nicely for a few fields beyond, 

 bearing left-handed up to Little Derby. But scent was decidedly evanescent in 

 the hot sun, and though they did touch the line when the huntsmen cast back 

 round Spilsbury's, they could not make much of it when their fox had got a bit 

 in front of them, and he had to be given up. Hounds were some time in covert 

 at Egginton Gorse before a fox was on foot. But, like Charles Lamb at the 

 India Office, he made amends for beginning late by leaving early, for, when 

 once found, he was soon away at the bottom end, crossing the brook and great 

 Northern Railway. As soon as hoimds had fairly settled to the line they began 

 to run with a vengeance. Heads up and sterns down, they raced by Horgate 

 Manor on their left, by Ivy Croft, over the big brook, with Hilton Mill on the 

 right. Over the lane leading to Marston-on-Dove they ran at an undiminished 

 pace and with only a select few in their immediate wake. Right-handed, they 

 swung over the main Derby road, and raced their fox to ground in a pit-hole on 

 Mr. Tipper's farm at Hilton Fields. A real, soul-stirring little gallop of fifteen 

 bright minutes, onl}' marred by a series of accidents caused by that awful curse 

 to a hunting field — barbed wire, to wit. The principal victims were a lady [Miss 



