1 6 A YEAR OF SPORT AND NATURAL HISTORY. 



sufficient. Before all followers have found their way out of cover 

 a trusty hound begins to feather on the line, gives a low whimper, 

 then throws his tongue gaily, and all, rushing together at that 

 challenge, drive with a merry chorus towards a valley where level 

 meadows give promise of scent. The promise is not belied, and 

 for ten minutes the hard riders have a taste of joy that makes them 

 envy not the fate of Leicestershire men. Master, huntsman, and 

 followers, however, knowing this is too good to last long, keep 

 their eyes bent on the leading hounds, who, topping a thorn fence, 

 speed up a swelling slope towards the flinty ridges. Into a deep 

 goyle they plunge, and then up the far side to where a ploughman 

 has halted his team that he may watch the sport. There the 

 hounds come to a check suddenly. Jim, by some path known only 

 to himself, gets to them quickly. The foremost riders, finding 

 their way barred by a ravine too big to be jumped at one stride, 

 make the clever hunters creep down to where the further bank 

 affords firm space for landing on. But a young horse-dealer, 

 whose four-year-old rushes at the goyle blindly, jumps almost on 

 the top of Jim's favourite hounds, and only escapes the torrent of 

 well-merited abuse by rolling backward among the bushes. This 

 is a warning to all other impetuous folk, who are content to seek 

 more easy ways of getting over. Some, finding a practicable bank 

 on the higher ground, scramble over it, and rush in where more 

 experienced sportsmen would fear to tread. Jim's self-control is 

 sorely tried when a portly gentleman proffers advice on the 

 assumption that our Fox must have been headed by the ploughman. 

 Some hounds apparently thought the same, for, after a fling 

 forward, they have come back to try the goyle. Jim, meanwhile 

 sits grimly silent, keeping his eye on one old hound and his horn 



