186 THE NOBLE SCIENCE. 



when fairly committed to a country. This observation 

 does not, of com'se, apply to a check, up-wind, in the first 

 ten minutes, or to the reasonable supposition, that the 

 fox has been headed ; but if you cast back, in the first 

 instance (according to a rule in beagling after a hare), 

 should you fail, you are too late to make good anything 

 forward, without lifting them, at a hand gallop, back 

 again, in a manner conveying to the whole field 

 the knowledge of your admission of a positive error. 

 Should you then hit him forward, you will yourself feel, 

 and have your pains rewarded by hearing, that if this 

 had been done at once, it would have made all the dif- 

 ference to the run ; whereas, if you get upon him ever 

 so late, should he have headed back, no one can blame 

 you for any time lost; nor is it, indeed, of the same 

 consequence; as he generally makes his point back 

 whence he came, or is viewed by dozens of people, 

 when he would have been unseen by any one, had he 

 not returned. Moreover, when a fox does head com- 

 pletely back, the cream of the thing is broken ; men do 

 not ride with the same zest, the last may be first, and 

 vice versa; the sharpness, the edge of the affair, is 

 blunted ; and although you may have very good sport, 

 and kill in a way satisfactory enough to a master of 

 hounds — " surgit amari aliquid" — in the description even 

 of a good ring, it is a sort of reflection upon the business, 

 and men forgive themselves more easily for missing 



