466 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



side-issues to distract and no discussions to interrupt. What 

 you jumped, what / jumped. What a wonderful horse I rode ; 

 what amount of attention courtesy demands that I should ex- 

 tend, or pretend to extend, to you before I proceed to pour 

 further marvellous experiences of my own into your unwilling 

 ears. These considerations have no place in the dreamer's 

 bright vision. They belong to the pleasant surface foam 

 brought into being by the flow of converse and the outpour of 

 comment, and that sparkles momentarily as the glass it accom- 

 panies. To the dreamer given the needed solitude the whole 

 panorama comes again, vivid, unclouded, and in sequence, as in 

 action it appeared to him differently enough, possibly, from 

 how it appeared to you. In the fragrant dream of this Christ- 

 mas Eve drowsy and slack though the day's downpour has 

 left me I can twist and turn through this familiar country, 

 recall its hound work, its huntsman work, its field-play, its 

 features and its incidents, far more closely and at far greater 

 length than I should dare inflict upon you. I can see that 

 dripping crowd not a great, but a very fitting, fashionable, and 

 representative little crowd mustered at the edge of Crick's 

 classical covert. 



A fox had been found ; but the fox wanted to go exactly 

 where late arrivals were coming from (and if you remember the 

 rain torrents of Tuesday morning, you will grant there was 

 excuse for late arriving). The poor brute sallied forth twice, to 

 be twice beaten back : and on a third occasion he was chased 

 home for his life by a black sheep-dog. How murderously we 

 felt towards that villanous col ley ! But even the best whip in 

 England can seldom wind his thong properly round these mar- 

 plot lurchers. A rare-hearted one was the Crick fox a credit 

 to his surroundings, and to the farmers who have made hunting 

 possible and pleasurable again in this old-world paradise. For 

 poetry and exaggeration apart if all we have seen and half 

 we have been told be true, the Crick country may well be titled 

 the " land of lost gods and godlike men." And we "no-account 

 men " may well be happy and proud to take our pleasure in it 



