476 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



we cherish. What we hate, and what we regret, will crop 

 up unbidden exorcise them as we will. 



But to-day, Thursday of the New Year, fox-hunting has 

 gone back into its case, as it were. The telescope, through 

 which we prolonged the view and pierced the distance while 

 we could, has gone to with a bang; and now we pace the 

 quarterdeck with never a sail in sight nothing living between 

 us and the horizon, of the sphere we have chosen for our 

 winter's cruise. 



Saturday was the beginning of the end, of the round of 

 sport belonging to 1889. To Badby Wood came all the 

 Christmas crowd not so much of horse (for surely fields are 

 bmaller this season) but of foot and of chariot. The hunt 

 commenced admirably for these two latter great divisions, 

 whose zest for fox-hunting is every bit as keen as belongs to 

 those on saddleback. For in five minutes a fox was killed 

 in their very midst. Ten minutes later the chase had gone 

 from them, had swept across the Newnham Valley, and dis- 

 appeared over the yonder hill the red-sand peak that over- 

 looks Daventry and peers across to Coventry in distant War- 

 wickshire. Stragglers marked the route for half an hour 

 more, as is customary from Badby Wood, in whose depths the 

 art of self-interment is practised to a degree beyond compare. 

 Then the chase and its every vestige had gone for the day, 

 to complete a twenty minutes' road-and-grass scurry to ground 

 at Dodford, and next to journey by cold slow steps yet farther 

 afield half a dozen miles as the crow flies (and the crow, 

 you know, is no flyer) to Althorpe Park, and to ground. I 

 thought, by the way, that I had learned something of soldier- 

 ing ; and I remember well that the Goosestep and Extension 

 motions constituted fundamentary lessons in the art of war. 

 But I never knew till to-day that these martial exercises had 

 any useful application to the gentler pursuits of peace. They 

 have, though ; as you might have seen for yourself had you 

 formed part of the Pytchley field of Saturday, completely 

 blocked from a road by a flock of sheep huddled in a gateway. 



