140 THE HAUGHTYSHIRE HUNT. 



instrument finally booted us out of the place, and broke the 

 post-horn m his despair. So, you see, we are speaking from 

 the vantage point of the serious musician, when we say delibe- 

 rately, and with the fear of Handel, Albert Chevalier, Mozart 

 and the composer of ' A monkey on a stick ' before our eyes, 

 that hounds' melody is the finest of all music, and we hope our 

 readers will chime in and exclaim, " And so say all of us ! " 

 * But to return, as the prudent soldier observed on first 

 sighting the enemy. The chorus was taken up with a ven- 

 geance, and the beauties rattled their fox round the covert 

 so hotly, that nolens volens, he had to break. This he did in 

 the orthodox way, at the down-wind corner, and within a few 

 yards of where Ben, the second Whip, sat motionless as a 

 statue on his clever-looking old horse. Ben is eager, young in 

 years, though much too old in experience to risk anything by 

 holloaing one moment before the right time. But as soon as 

 that lithe, red-brown form is well away from the friendly 

 shelter of the covert, Ben's view holloa is let go like a pent-up 

 torrent, and before more than half-a-dozen men can come clat- 

 tering down the nearest ride, hounds are fairly on the line. 



"Hold hard, gentlemen, hold hard, please ! " cries Will, his 

 red old face glowing with suppressed excitement. 



" Will you have the great goodness not to make quite 

 such an ass of yourself? " came in the Duke's honeyed tones. 

 " Thank you, I'm sure you'll pardon me, but your holloaing 

 is really so confusing to hounds," and the abashed little hatter 

 from Mudbury shuts his widely-opened mouth with a snap. 



Another outburst of melody and they are away, and hunting 

 him smartly over a small piece of seeds on to the ploughed 

 land beyond. A hand-gate lets all the field through into this, 



