334 THE MEYNELL HOUNDS. [1900 



to the long plantation on the outskirts of Marston Park. An awkward place is 

 this to get in and out of, and to-day a considerable detour had to be made just at 

 a time when hounds wanted help badly. As it was, they were run out of scent 

 close to the top of the Rocester Hill, after a slow hunt of forty minutes. 



Tuesday, at Newton village, was a horse of quite a different colour, as our 

 American cousins say, for the day was as fair as yesterday was foul, and Newton 

 village is — well, let us say — Newton village, for comparisons are odious, as the 

 copybooks used to tell us. The words of the old Warwickshire hunting song, 

 " 'Tis a fine hunting day, and as balmy as May," seemed singularly appropriate, 

 and he must have been a more than ordinarily melancholy Jacques who did not 

 feel his spirits rise to the occasion as hounds trotted oft' to draw Dapple Lea 

 brake. A fox was soon on foot in Newton Gorse, and was even more rapidly 

 brought to hand. Why he succumbed so easily was not apparent, for there 

 seemed to be nothing to head him. Then came a long jog to Coley Gorse, of 

 which nothing came. There seemed to be a stale line — very stale — and that 

 was all. A ride over a country autumnally tinted with red boards and white 

 flags — the former a warning, the latter an invitation, though the space marked 

 out as jumpable was by no means alluring — brought us to Blithfield Gorse and 

 plenty. How many foxes there were it is difficult to say for certain, but there 

 was at any rate a leash. A good-looking, bright-coated gentleman, with a white 

 waistcoat worthy of an alderman, and a small white tip to his brush, was the one 

 hoimds ran merrily to the Rectory Plantation, but whether it was the same one 

 which they took from there (a brace went away) nearly down to the river is not 

 quite plain. Having no liking for a cold bath, even on a warm morning, he 

 turned back over the hill for Blithfield, and, after a short check, hounds ran him 

 nicely to the pit-hole just outside the Park on the Newton side. But this time 

 the earths were stopped, and, without dwelling, they ran prettily to the bridge, 

 where the road from Newton Hurst crosses the Blythe. Evidently our fox pre- 

 ferred a dry crossing to a wet bath. Old Daylight could just feel the line up the 

 road, but could not speak to it till she dashed into the little spinny on the 

 farther side. There, indeed — 



" Every maith was open, from the old 'un to the pup. 

 An' aw the pack together took the swellin' chorus up." 



The huntsman's cheery " Forrard, forrard," helped to put life into the chase, 

 when hounds, getting together again as they left the spinny behind them, 

 skurried along by the Callow farm, and bent towards the main road. But it was 

 only a bend, for they soon flung into a straight line again for Kingston Wood, 

 rimning parallel with the bridle-road. In the wood they checked, but were soon 

 on the line again, and out and over the main road into Bagot's Wood, with a 

 brace of foxes before them. 



"Ah, much it grieves the Muse to tell 

 At Clanfield how Valentia fell," 



sings Mr. Egerton Warburton, in the poem of the Tarwood Hunt, and equally 

 does it gi-ieve the present scribe to relate how what looked like developing into 

 quite a good run died ingloriously away owing to there being two lines. Half 

 the hounds ran on nearly to Park Stile before they were stopped, while a couple 

 and a half crossed over into Floyer's Coppice, with a tired fox in front of them. 

 Meanwhile the other half hunted their fox into Lord's Coppice and out nearly to 

 Duckley Wood, where he was given up. After the divided pack had joined 

 forces they found in Duckley Wood and ran out to Abbots Bromley, and 

 eventually into the woods. 



