FOX-IIOITXDS. 181 



ference for a carted deer or red-herring drag, if a fox is 

 not found a quarter of an hour after the hounds are 

 thrown into cover, were not to he found. The men 

 who ride on the Lincohishire Wolds are all sportsmen, 

 who know the whole country as well as their own gar- 

 dens, and are not unfrequently personally acquainted 

 with the peculiar appearance and hahits of each fox on 

 foot. Altogether, they are as formidable critics as any 

 professional huntsman would care to encounter. 



There is another pleasant thing. In consequence, 

 perhaps, of the rarity, strangers are not snubbed as in 

 some counties ; and you have no difnculty in getting 

 information to any extent on subjects agricultural and 

 fox-hunting (even without tliat excellent passport which 

 w^e enjoyed of a hunter from the stables of the noble 

 Master of the Hounds), and may be pretty sure of 

 more than hospitable and really-meant invitation in tlie 

 course of the return ride when the sport is ended. 



But time is up, and away we trot — leaving the woods 

 of Limber for the present — to one of the regular Wolds 

 coverts, a square of artificial gorse of several acres, sur- 

 rounded by a turf bank and ditch, and outside again by 

 fields of the ancient turf of the moorlands. In go the 

 hounds at a word, without a straggler ; and while they 

 make the gorse alive with their lashing sterns, there is 

 no fear of oin- being left behind for want of seeing 

 which way they go, for there is neither plantation nor 

 hedge of any account to screen, us. And there is no 

 fear either of the fox being stupidly headed, for the 

 field all know their business, and are fully agreed, as 

 old friends should be, on the probable line. 



A very faint Tally- away, and cap held up, by a fresh- 

 complexioned, iron-gray, bullet-headed old gentleman, 

 of sixteen stone, mounted on a four-year-old, brought 



