A HUNTS At AN' S DIARY, AND MINE. 197 



brilliant scent on a day similarly quiet, grey, and sporting. 

 But, different to Saturday's experience elsewhere, their fox was 

 short-running and the country some of the worst in the Hunt. 

 The Belvoir Heath or the Bicester Flat offer very similar 

 ground to such as exists between Ellsworth and Towcester. 

 But there was a killing scent : and hounds ran none the less 

 gloriously because the light red soil was mostly turned up for 

 root and barley-growing, and the hedges were chiefly boundary 

 marks or sheep guards, with many a bridle -road to lend still 

 further facility to the careful galloper. I cannot pretend to an 

 intimacy with this part of a very varied country ; nor, were I in 

 the full youth of ambition, should I feel drawn to this particular 

 section. But commend me to this arena if a crack pack were 

 always to carry such a head over it as on Monday. Their fox, 

 sturdy if not straight, never had a chance before them. He 

 gained, moreover, a full minute at starting from Nun Wood, 

 through the intervention of a flock of sheep in each of two first 

 "fields. As he turned away from the edge of the Plane Woods, 

 the pace warmed up, and they raced him round to (I believe it 

 was) the Cottage Plantation by Easton Park as quick a twenty 

 minutes as is often galloped. On thence, across a certain ex- 

 tent of grass, broken by road and quarry-tramway, till, after 

 forty and odd minutes, they had their fox to ground under the 

 Watling-street road, about two miles north of Towcester town. 

 There are times in fox hunting when a rider had best be brave. 

 There are times again when he had better be clever, or at least 

 follow some one who is clever and accomplished. In the fastest 

 and earliest part of this gallop, the brave were all pounded 

 while the clever and their following had an easy time alongside 

 the pack. Verbum sap. 



With true gratitude and with never a qualm of shame I view 

 the fact that I was not called upon to hunt on Tuesday. I 

 (that is, I who am much as other men, in my desire to combine 

 some sense of comfort with as free as possible indulgence in the 

 pleasures of the chase, and who am called upon often to write 

 a representative ego to express in some small measure the views 



