178 FOX-HOUNDS. 



ing in front; a couple of stiff hedges and ditches were 

 got over comfortably ; the third was a regular bulfinch, 

 six or seven feet high, with a gate so far away to the 

 right that to make for it was to lose too much time, as 

 the hounds were running breast high. Ten yards ahead 

 of me w^as Mr. Frank G , on a Stormer colt, evi- 

 dently with no notion of turning ; so I hardened my 

 heart, felt my bay nag full of going, and kept my eye on 

 Mr. Frank, who made for the only practicable place 

 beside an oak-tree wdth low branches, aud, stooping his 

 head, popped through a place where the hedge showed 

 daylight, with his hand over his eyes, in the neatest 

 possible style. Without hesitating a moment I followed, 

 rather too fast and too much afraid of the tree, and 

 pulled too much into the hedge. In an instant I found 

 myself torn out of the saddle, balanced on a blackthorn 

 bough (fortunately I wore leathers), and deposited on the 

 right side of the hedge on my back ; whence I rose just 

 in time to see Bay Middleton disappear over the next 

 fence. So there I was alone in a big grass field, with 

 strong notions that I should have to walk an unknown 

 number of miles home. Judge of my delight as I paced 

 slowly along — running was of no use— at seeing Frank 



G returning with my truant in hand. Such an 



action in the middle of a ran deserves a Humane 

 Society's medal. To struggle breathless into my seat ; 

 to go off at score, to find a lucky string of open gates, to 

 come upon the hounds at a check, was my good fortune 

 But our fox was doomed— in another quarter of an hour 

 at a hand gallop we hunted him into a shrubbery, across 

 a home field into an ornamental clump of laurels, back 

 again to the plantation, where a couple and a half of 

 leading hounds pulled him down, and he was brought 

 out by the first whi^) dead and almost stiff, without a 



