MISS BADSWORTH, M.F.H. 301 



until presently all trace of the line disappeared. It was half- 

 past three and a grey mist was already veiling objects. One 

 by one the members of the field had dropped away till only 

 half a dozen were left. Miss Badsworth's horse had cast a 

 shoe and Jack Morgan's had badly stubbed a fetlock joint. 

 Jimmy Edwards, of Tod's Farm, was there, but then he was 

 a hound lover as well as a hard rider. 



Poor Lavvy had had quite enough of it, but she was a 

 Badsworth, and it must be remembered that a difference 

 exists between stopping your hounds and losing your fox. 



In the next field a shepherd was pitching hurdles. He 

 might have been deaf and dumb and blind so unmoved did 

 he appear by hounds and horses in his immediate neigh- 

 bourhood. He drove his iron bar into the ground with stolid 

 regularity. 



'' That man knows all about it, miss," Edwards said, 

 riding up to Lavvy, who was watching her hounds en- 

 deavouring to put things right for themselves. At that 

 moment the shepherd's dog came cantering back through 

 a gateway with lolling tongue. 



"That dog has coursed the fox," Lavvy replied. (It had 

 been no unusual circumstance in Cornwall.) 



A touch of the horn and she rode for the gateway through 

 which the dog had returned. 



A wide circle was almost complete, and Lavvy was just 

 thinking she had better give up and go home when Way- 

 farer hit the line beside a fence, and once more progress was 

 made. But the dusk was falling rapidly and dropping shots 

 a mile away in front were to be heard. A covert was being 

 shot, so home was the word, and home was fourteen miles 

 away. 



(It is very probable that the fox which entered *' the last 

 corner" in one of Silas Tucker's coverts just as the final 

 show of birds was about to be made, and caused the majority 

 of pheasants to break back, was the hunted fox ; of course I 

 don't know, but it seems likely. Anyway, there were no 

 hounds to blame.) 



