ATHERSTONE. 295 



bigger and wilder beasts of the forest could scarcely have out- 

 done. Her screams, too, attracted attention from a distance, as 

 the same sounds might had you or I or a keen multitude 

 heard them from afar, with hounds in covert. Two more 

 foxhunting farmers were passing near, heard the sharp signal, 

 that set their hearts beating pounced on the fox no, foxes, a 

 brace of them chopped them as they left covert, and brought 

 them both to hand, dark lantern and all ! Moral. Lock up 

 your chicken-houses ; and bring up your daughters to pay 

 homage to a fox. 



AT H ERST ONE. 



THE Atherstone marked the Rugby Carnival (Friday, 

 Jan. 27th) in very pretty fashion, with a gallop that might 

 serve either to rouse the wearied spirit of the midnight 

 reveller or to hurry the pulse of the sturdiest early-to-bed 

 foxhunter. They gave the ball-goers till midday, and a while 

 besides, to bring their shattered remains in trim and plausible 

 order to the covert-side. Alas for the thirst of honest riot, for 

 the after-conscience of merry-making, for the retribution that 

 is gathered with the grape, and for the punishment that is 

 meted out to the scoffer-at-sleep not a bottle of soda was 

 to be had within a mile of the meet! Coton House was 

 but, as it were, a whited sepulchre a hideous mockery of 

 Drought and Despair ; silent as the grave, empty as a Marine 

 Magnum, dry as the Great Sahara. So powerfully did this 

 unfitness of things appeal to one of our more opulent fellow 

 foxhunters, that he decided there and then it should be so 

 no more. When another January comes and the Atherstone 

 are again at the door of Coton, pallid youth shall no longer, 1 

 warrant me, lounge limp and athirst in its saddle, but shall 

 well be found fit to ride over every hound in the pack ! Not 

 but that this latter virtue was displayed with some little 

 freedom in the earlier minutes of the run to-day ; but, if I 

 understand the symptoms, or if I took in at all accurately the 



