THE MASTER OF HOUNDS 77 



with a fair amount of certainty where the meets for the 

 following week will be, or if not the actual places of 

 meeting, the coverts which are likely to be drawn. In 

 one country lately it amused two or three of us to write 

 down an anticipation of the meets in two countries a 

 week in advance. In one of these the master was 

 methodical and scrupulously fair, and knowing some- 

 thing of his scheme of hunting the country we could 

 guess correctly about two meets out of every three, 

 while the third was generally quite close to the place 

 we had decided upon, and practically meant the same 

 country. In the other case the master was guided by 

 no sort of plan except (probably) the inclination of the 

 moment. To anticipate his fixtures was pure guess- 

 work, and to anticipate his draw when those fixtures 

 were reached was simply impossible. 



There should be — and is in many hunts — as much 

 method in the arrangement of the draw as in the rota- 

 tion of meets. Good and bad coverts alike must be 

 drawn, if possible, at regular intervals, and the careful 

 master duly considers, and maps out in his mind, each 

 draw before he goes out. It may be that on arrival at 

 the meet he is asked to draw some covert that he has 

 not intended to go to, and that he cannot well refuse the 

 invitation, but if he is a man of method he will tackle 

 his originally intended draw as soon as he is at liberty 

 — unless, indeed, hounds have taken him into another 

 country. Last winter we were hunting with a provincial 

 pack, and one day the first covert entered held a fox 

 which took hounds steadily on at a holding pace for 

 over an hour. Then, owing to a curious declivity in 

 the ground, and the shoulder of a hill, hounds were 

 lost altogether, but shortly afterwards their line was 

 found, and we all followed on a long way behind. At 



