1900] SPORT IMPROVES. 321 



they ran riglit merrily up to the main Uttoxeter road. Tumini^ right-handed 

 they ran parallel with it to Broughton Hollow, where they crossed it, and then 

 the brooklet, and went chattering over a beautiful line of country, when a little 

 boy [Master Basil Randall] on a right good bay pony, going gallantly, charged a 

 fence too big for juvenile effort, and was turned over handsomely. But hounds 

 kept running on, all in a cluster now, over the road from Sudbury to Somersal, 

 by Mr. Ling's farm, past Maresfield Gorse, and into the corner of the Alder Moor. 

 Here the fox, finding people at work, dashed out again in a rare fluster, and, 

 turning at a right angle, made his way up the hill again by Somersal House, past 

 Somersal village, nearly to Lea Hill, where he crossed the Somersal brook near 

 the osier-bed. Then turning right-handed he followed the brook course till he 

 got to ground in a pit-hole on Mr, Smith's farm at Wardley, almost opposite 

 "Wardley Coppice, after a very nice gallop of forty minutes, which made ample 

 amends for a bad morning. 



Tuesday, Bramshall. A rainy morning developed into a nice day, and 

 though the drops hung on the bushes, there was a scent. It was but a small 

 field — though composed of those who " by hook or crook would have a look, 

 I'll undertake to say," at hounds, go where they might — which followed the pack 

 as they settled to the line of a fox who went away on the side of Philips' Gorse 

 nearest Mr. Lovat's house. 



"There's a scent you may swear by the pace that they drive, 

 You may tackle to work with a will." 



And that hard-riding little field did tackle to work, as hounds ran right 

 merrily to the right of the road, which goes past Philips' Gorse to Field, and 

 parallel with it, but bearing towards it. Diverging from the road, they ran by 

 Godstone, with Dodsleigh on their right, pushing along steadily and determinedly 

 up-wind, fast enough for any one, unless we except the gentleman [Mr. Caldecott] 

 on the chestnut, who was leading the hunt by two or three fields as the pack 

 dashed over the road near the boundary of the Meynell and the North Staffs, 

 hunts, and made a sharpish right-handed turn for Dobson's Gorse ere bearing for 

 Newhouse Sprink. They went into the Old Gorse at the top end — twenty-four 

 minutes of the best, a four-mile point, up-wind, on the whole, all the way, except 

 where the fox made a sharp zigzag here and there, which promptly brought 

 hounds to their noses — and came out at the bottom, so that of their following the 

 last became first. The dog hounds were in as good voice to-day as a prima 

 donna. " I have not heard such music," as the old sportsman said to the young 

 lady when she rose from the piano, " since my old hound, Bellower, last opened 

 on a woodland fox." How they threw their tongues as the spray flew over them 

 while they dashed along the flooded meadows by the brook, and mounted the 

 hill for Bromley Wood. Yet a little while and they ran merrily, and then came 

 the inevitable. With an up-wind fox, one of three things, if you do not change, 

 must happen. You must either kill him — a consummation most devoutly to be 

 desired— run him to ground, or turn down-wind again. Unluckily to-day the 

 latter was our fate. It is one thing to run a fresh-found fox up-wind with a good 

 start ; it is quite a different matter to walk after a half-tired dodging one some 

 way behind him the reverse way. Besides, do not we all hate retracing our 

 steps? The up-wind forward is like the descent of Avernus, easy and lovely ; 

 the down-wind backward resembles the climbing up again, which the poet tells 

 us is a matter of toil and difficulty. In hunting the latter fall to hounds and 

 huntsman. Now is the time to watch the former an you will, but, after all, is i 

 not the pace that gives life unto the chase ? So after leaving Bromley Wood on 

 VOL. II. Y 



