IVEEDON BARRACKS THE CENTRE. 215 



Spring. It happens I had to do eighteen miles across the 

 heart of Pytchleydom on Friday ; but even a spring captain 

 could scarcely be happy while spokes rattled and dust flew thus, 

 though voyaging through the undulating loveliness of Kilsby, 

 Buckby, Haddon, and Welford. The sun seemed to shine 

 through a black veil ; the dark hedges were in quiet mourning, 

 while birds in high feather and lambs in high jinks proclaimed 

 the land their own. So it was indeed though I fear the gay 

 rascals sang a different tune on the morrow, when another freak 

 of weather awaited them. 



So to Saturday, the 12th. Weedon Barracks with the same 

 pack and a good many of the same people. Rugby came by 

 rail, door to door. And the soldiers insisted that all should 

 consider " the sun to be over the yardarm." The only men, by 

 the way, who can honestly and solidly claim proficiency at a 

 hunt-breakfast, even at noon, are the robust, healthy, and true 

 sportsmen above-mentioned " who lose by the land " but who 

 stick to it and are round the farm before the bugle has sounded 

 for guard mounting or the landlord has slept off his last cigar 

 (if in these pauper times he can afford himself flor fina cabagio 

 at all). The appetite of work and the thirst of late research 

 were alike readily ministered to, by the section of Her Majesty's 

 Army that her Jubilee year finds here awaiting its turn of 

 foreign service, and whose creed is to be embodied in the local 

 .Standing Orders for all generations, and batteries: "Dine in 

 blue, and ride in red ; quaff good liquor and scorn a head." 



Snow yes, snow, and two inches of it had fallen betwixt 

 cockcrow and blind-opening (these dates at any rate involving 

 a margin upon which I defy contradiction for the Ides of 

 March are at midday, while Foxhunting is a favourite over- 

 night toast and a prolonged topic here). Foxes won't run 

 to snow, it would seem. Dodford Holt, accordingly, had no 

 answer to give. But Mr. Burton had a very determined fox 

 in his tiny gorse above Daventry. Hounds too appeared to 

 like the slippery snow-spread hillside far better than did men 

 and horses (I honestly believe that, if these horses had not been 

 in a still greater funk than ourselves in our " slithering " 



