PACE AND BLOOD. 373 



The road from Byfield to Hellidou was in itself bad falling 

 ground to a tangled hedge and ditch and a frightened horse 

 emphasised it by striking his prostrate rider with his heel. 

 (Nor was this the worst fall of the day into a road : for Mr. G. 

 Campbell came off almost scatheless as compared with Baron 

 M. de Tuyli later in the day. But the painful accidents which 

 too often form the black side of fox-hunting must never be my 

 theme though a word of sympathy and regret cannot but slip 

 occasionally from the flippant pen). Within a mile of Prior's 

 Marston occurred the one brief check which was more than 

 righted by the huntsman galloping his pack forward three fields 

 to a cap uplifted. This set us on the spot where the Warwick- 

 shire stopped in their morning scurry from Shuckburgh last 

 week. But there was a stouter scent in the valley to-day; 

 and hotly they ran it round the village of Hellidon and to the 

 edge of Dane Hole. Too blown and heated to enter the covert, 

 he struck forward yet over the grass beneath Catesby House ; 

 climbed the upland between that and Staverton ; and strove 

 hard for Badby Wood. "Yonder he goes " the gladdest of all 

 sights and the most exciting of all signals that pertain to the 

 killing of bold reynard. " Yonder he goes " through the sheep, 

 yonder he crawls over the greensward on the brow. The bristling 

 ladies are savaging on his track, are at his very heels are in 

 view are on him. Who-whoop. And the big wood was only 

 two fields further. 



Free from cares political and questions polemical, by no one 

 were the delights of riding to hounds more plainly evidenced 

 than in the person of Lord Spencer mounted on a four-year- 

 old bred at Althorp. Lord Alfred Fitzroy, no doubt represent- 

 ing the noble master, was also in close presence and observance 

 throughout the hunt, which, if I mistake not, was a study of 

 pleasure to two gallant new-comers (I have put the sentence too 

 clumsily to admit of the additional freedom of appending their 

 names). But I shall add that the yeomen of the immediate 

 neighbourhood were very aptly and forwardly represented by 

 Mr. Waring on his well-tried grey. 



