HOW SPORT IS SPOILED. 105 



gaze of all eyes excepting that one piercing pair, which, 

 should in the general interest be hookwinked ? In either 

 case the fox is headed, perhaps chopped. Other mis- 

 deeds the field is prone too. Without counting jealousy 

 and riding over hounds, the list of crimes is long. The 

 hard riders are bad enough, but as a rule they are not 

 the earliest offenders. The people who don't ride are 

 specially fond of " cutting off the hounds." For example, 

 a fox goes away from a gorse ; a minute or two elapse 

 between his departure and the coming away of the pack ; 

 he, like time and tide, waits for no man, and is over half 

 a dozen fields in no time. In the sixth he is viewed by 

 a rustic, who holloas himself hoarse, just at the moment 

 when the hounds take up the scent. Immediately the 

 cunning riders are off up the nearest road to the holloa, 

 and when the hounds get there, on the line, they find 

 between them and their fox some forty horses. 



Now, neither the ability nor the desire is given to 

 most packs to hunt steadily through a steaming phalanx 

 of horses, many of whom, as their instinct teaches them, 

 are handy with their heels. There are packs (like Mr. 

 Tailby's for example, or the Pytchley lady pack in Lord 

 Spencer's mastership), whose normal condition (no fault 

 of the last-named master's by the way) it is to be among 

 horses, and they are not much more upset by having 

 horses in front of them than behind or on either side : 

 and such packs will endeavour to work on through the 

 crowd. But even here the fox gains an advantage which 

 his astute nature is quick enough to profit by; while if 

 the hounds are afraid of the horses, as most hounds are, 

 the run is over, or at least it degenerates into that 

 melancholy performance, walking after a fox, without 

 any chance of improving one's acquaintance with him. 



