ONLOOKER ABROAD AND AT HOME. 71 



they could amply hold their own, in this sphere, as in all 

 others, with the rougher sex, was patent to-day and on the 

 morrow. Two other, more abstract, points engraved themselves 

 on the none too impressionable plate of Onlooker's under- 

 standing, to be reproduced for what they are worth first, that 

 " form will be served," or, in other words, that in a " dart " over 

 a country the proved men of a Hunt invariably come to the 

 front ; secondly (and T must be allowed to say it without 

 offence), that when the country is easy, and a field is once 

 roused, even the combination of a popular and determined 

 Master and a quick huntsman will not suffice to keep the field 

 off a pack of hounds any more here than in certain other 

 grass countries, to which over-riding hounds is supposed to be a 

 special attribute. To illustrate the first, it is merely necessary 

 to allude to the early scramble of the day from Poodle Gorse ; 

 whence Mr. George Drake and Mr. Harter went to the front 

 like rockets. To prove the second, we have only to take the 

 main run of the day some forty-five minutes from Frinckford 

 over and round the " Bicester Flat." The latter is, perhaps, 

 held the poorest section of the Bicester country being chiefly 

 light plough with very easy fences (exactly similar, in fact, to 

 the Heath district of the Belvoir). With an indifferent, or at 

 least broken-hearted, fox, there was more .than a fair scent 

 and the public rode. A hundred men and women (and who 

 shall blame them ?) were all as well to the front as each other 

 or the hounds or more so. Yet it was a day of constant 

 interest and amusement. And now, having ventured these, a 

 stranger's comments, I need scarcely go back so far for further 

 details of little interest. 



While Tuesday was in every sense a perfect hunting day, 

 Wednesday, Dec. 20, found the Duke of Grafton's meeting at 

 Wicken in a cold thick fog. But, after trotting through it for a 

 couple of miles, hounds were thrown into what, in the semi- 

 darkness, may or may not have been an osier bed, close to the 

 village of Deanshanger. So dense, indeed, was the mist that 

 Onlooker only realised he was by a covertside at all, through 



