A CURE FOR INFLUENZA. 477 



Why, sir, two veteran dragoons set things right directly. Dis- 

 mounting on the instant, and throwing bridle-reins to the 

 nearest comrade, they thrust themselves between the sheep 

 and the gate and with shout and holloa played goosestep and 

 third-practice-extension in the faces of the astonished ewes. 

 The performance was over all too quickly. The whole flock 

 turned in terror from balanced legs and waving arms, and fled 

 precipitately. 



A CURE FOR INFLUENZA. 



Wednesday, Jan. 8th. A very Hemplow morning. Let not 

 this expression be misconstrued into any aspersion upon what I 

 would rather term the backbone of the Pytchley country. But, 

 personally, I don't like these Pytchley Grampians in a morning, 

 after Christmas. There are too many people on such occasions 

 for quiet mountain hunting. They get round the coombes and 

 sholahs, and give a fox but indifferent chance of making the 

 country. They envelope the slopes and summits as in a 

 cavalry fieldday on the Fox Hills, of Aldershot's school-field. Yet 

 a first fox went before they had fairly manned the heights ; 

 and for a quarter of an hour afterwards they trooped down to 

 the drain that had given him shelter, half a mile off. Of the 

 second fox I remember most that the pack could hunt him 

 splendidly along a road, and very little elsewhere. What 

 became of him \ bother this epidemic, I forget. But I can 

 recall that, with a scent suddenly freshening, they fairly raced 

 another fox from Lord Spencer's covert across the gated two- 

 mile course to the Hemplow. And yet, by some ingenious 

 iniquity the mob were at the far end of the hills before him, to 

 drive him back to a rabbit-hole. " Oh, for a Master. Oh, for 

 a man !" Another lucid interval reveals to me the flying start 

 from Yelvertoft Fieldside. Our fox had swum the canal from 

 covert to the spinney beyond ; and hounds were' skying across 

 the meadows before men had realised there was occasion to 



