130 COURSING THE HARE 



certainly have been postponed. On this occasion 

 some who had brought dogs went home again with- 

 out running ; but others would have a trial at any 

 price, and so we took the field. Hares were wild, as 

 they generally are in sucli weather, and I daresay 

 some of the slips were much too long ; but the fact 

 remains that when we were stopped by a blinding 

 snowstorm at two o'clock we had coursed twelve hares, 

 all of whom had made good their escape. 



During the following week we had a continuance 

 of the changeable weather — snow one day, thaw the 

 next, and then a frost before the snow had altogether 

 disappeared. It was a miserable week for country 

 folk, and things were little better on Saturday- ; but 

 the coursers had mostly come from lower-l\ing 

 districts, and again many of them were willing to take 

 their chance of laming their dogs on the frozen places. 

 At the end of the afternoon out came the squire's 

 little pocket-book— in which he made a memorandum 

 after every course — and in high delight he exclaimed, 

 ' We've had eighteen slips, seventeen courses, one no 

 go, and not a hare killed 1 ' which, coming on the 

 top of the previous Saturday's doings, made a total of 

 twenty-seven courses without a kill. 



Mention of Broomshields reminds me that it is 

 never advisable to send greyhounds away to a 



