240 HARE-HUNTING AND HARRIERS 



&c. I have for years watched the demeanour of 

 hounds at the death, and whether they run into and 

 kill and devour the hare themselves, as sometimes 

 happens, or whether the hare is taken from them and 

 saved, I have never been able to discover that their 

 keenness thereafter was greater one way than the 

 other. Still, Mr. Carlton Cross holds the contrary 

 opinion, and thinks that it is " most necessary " that 

 harriers should have plenty of hares. 



Mr. Cross sends me a very amusing instance of the 

 mysterious disappearance of a hare at the end of a 

 run. All hare-hunters, I am afraid, can bear testi- 

 mony to being robbed of the fruits of a hard run in 

 some such manner ; but the experience of the Master 

 of the Aspull harriers is almost unique. He had run 

 a hare and lost her. Riding up to an old woman who 

 was passing by, he asked her if she had seen anything 

 of the quarry. She answered that she had not, and 

 went on her way. Mr. Cross never noticed her 

 umbrella, but the old dame had actually picked up 

 the hare, deposited it in her umbrella, and got clear 

 away with it ! Well, to an old and poor woman one 

 would not grudge a spent hare now and again, but 

 it is rather maddening, as one discovers afterwards, 

 when some poaching lout with a dog picks up the 

 hunted hare at the end of a hard run and makes 

 off with it, thus robbing the pack of its well-earned 

 blood and some honest farmer of a capital dinner. 



This incident with the Aspull harriers is, however, 

 not quite unprecedented. More than a hundred years 

 ago a country woman, passing down a lane, came face 

 to face with a hare hotly pursued by a pack of harriers. 

 The hare was so intent on the clamour of her followers 

 that she never observed the woman, who, " with great 

 presence of mind," as the chronicler puts it, stooped 



