90 THE COMPLETE FOXHUNTER 



in the earlier hunt had gone there. The master sent a 

 second horseman to clear them away, but the mischief 

 had been done, for on the evidence of a man who was 

 ploughing quite a number of people had been laughing 

 and talking round the small covert for half an hour, 

 and a fox had stolen away. 



At two or three fields' distance there was another 

 small gorse, and after the first of these two coverts had 

 been drawn blank hounds spoke to the line of the fox 

 which had stolen away on the grass, and gradually took 

 it towards the second covert. But, alas ! the high road 

 was close to the boundary of this covert, and as the fox 

 tried to break he was headed by various small groups 

 of riders, who were going home from the kill of nearly 

 an hour before, and dodging back into shelter was 

 quickly chopped. And even as it was he might have 

 succeeded in crossing the road and giving a run, but he 

 had been holloaed the moment he was seen, and had 

 turned tail at once. Not a single man or woman of the 

 various parties who were going leisurely homewards 

 had tried to get out of the way, or even to keep quiet, 

 and when one or two of them were informed of the mis- 

 chief they had caused, they really did not seem to see 

 the heinousness of their offence. "We were going 

 quietly home along the high road," they said, the nice- 

 ties of the situation being entirely ignored. 



Now we venture to say that such an incident as the 

 one we have narrated would have been impossible a 

 generation or two ago. In the first place, there would 

 have been no wholesale breaking up of the field so early 

 in the day. An odd man might have been obliged to 

 go home for some reason or other, but it would have 

 been against the grain, and as for the bulk of the field 

 being satisfied with half a day, such a thing would have 



