HUNTING LOCALITIES 163 



story of Devonshire hunting. He also observed inci- 

 dentally that he was a doctor, and that nearly fifty 

 years before he had for a time acted as assistant to 

 a country practitioner in the neighbourhood of Syston. 

 He was travelling for pleasure, and was going to re- 

 visit Syston merely because he had never been in 

 Leicestershire since he had left it half a century before. 

 We were going to Loughborough, and our friend left 

 us at Leicester, intending to drive from that town to 

 Syston. Curiously enough, on the evening of the fol- 

 lowing day the old gentleman got into the train by 

 which we were returning to town, and all the babble of 

 horse and hound had gone. He was sorry he had re- 

 visited the country which he knew in Lord Stamford's 

 day, and his chief cause for sorrow was that Leicester 

 had grown out of knowledge, that the road to Sileby 

 was a street for a great part of its distance, and that 

 much of the country about Syston and Sileby had suc- 

 cumbed to the builder, while the limeworks and brick- 

 works had greatly increased in size. "Indeed, if all 

 the Quorn country has changed as it has between 

 Leicester and Barrow-on-Soar, I don't know where 

 hounds can hunt," he exclaimed ; but he brisked up 

 when we told him he had seen the most populous 

 district in the hunt, and a few minutes later he was 

 drinking the toast of " Foxhunting " in as good a glass 

 of champagne as the Midland dining-train could 

 supply. 



Loughborough, too, commands practically all of the 

 Quorn country — indeed, we might say with truth that 

 any one who wishes to hunt all four days with the 

 Quorn, and does not care about any other pack, could 

 not do better than pitch his tent at Loughborough. It 

 is quite in the centre of the hunt ; the old kennels were 



