THE BRAUNSTON GALLOP OF THE PYTCHLEY. 307 



sinking astern. Let the old, old, men talk as they like. 

 " Hounds are bred too fast," they say" sport is spoiled and 

 foxes can't run as they did in our day." Why, have we not 

 twice in one week, seen a fox playing with hounds for forty- 

 five minutes and simply laughing at a Midland field ? No, 

 old gentleman, no ! Slow off our foxes, give us Newmarket 

 mounts (with double bridle mouths and with Liverpool talent) 

 then you may hope to set things on an even footing, and we 

 may hunt the fox in old-fashioned form ! Happily, for the 

 equilibrium of foxhunting, for balance of temperament, for 

 method of science, for the adaptability of huntsman's skill and 

 of master's sweet sway, such delirious rushes come to madden a 

 field only at rare intervals. Or all steadiness would be gone, 

 all ballast would be lost. I have ridden to hounds for more 

 years than I can hope to ride again. But not six times in 

 those cherished annals of the past can I look back upon a pack 

 running with such sweet venom as oirSaturday (Pytchley) and 

 Thursday (aforetold). 



Now to Braunston Gorse I have event and movement still 

 vivid to mind and eye. May my pen dissolve in rust if it can't 

 evolve some tangible action out of scenes that have been my 

 waking thoughts for two nights and shall be my memory while 

 scent lingers in the black pad of this Braunston fox (a sniff 

 and a solace I begged and pocketed against a sportless summer). 



A yellow, bright, fellow he was, that stemmed the easy west 

 wind and left the gorse behind. To-day we were privileged to 

 line the covert's upper boundary, to peer into the inner thicket, 

 to gaze over and beyond it upon the rich green vale beneath, 

 and to shut off our fox from the less witching land behind us. 

 I cannot sketch but I can give you a trace from the Ordnance 

 Map. It may help my words to convey their meaning, and my 

 reader to fill in where I fail to be clear. 



The Gorse, then, looks south and west with the young 

 Leame, or locally the Braunston Brook, marking the valley 

 between it and Shuckburgh Hill. And straight for the brook 

 rollicked a jovial fox, with never a glance at the cluster of 



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