183 J J THE FIRST WILL SMITH. 59 



fast gallop from Great Coates Marsh Covert, severely taxing 

 the abilities of man and horse. Hounds went away at 

 once towards the Humber, turned to the left, and, with 

 the village of Great Coates on the right, ran back to 

 Wybers Wood, hounds having no fewer than four foxes in 

 front of them, three of which they must have picked up 

 in the marshes, as only one left the covert, of a certainty. 

 They went straight through Wybers, and ran a ring round 

 Maud Hole before entering that covert, and going away 

 from it with a leash of foxes in front of them. The pack 

 followed the one that went through AVybers Wood to 

 Great Coates village, where they turned left-handed over 

 Healing Field, and, skirting the marshes, crossed the Old 

 Fleet, and, with Stallingborough on the left, ran close up 

 to Immingham. Here they again turned to the left as if 

 for Roxton Wood, and right-handed through Foxhole 

 Close, over Habrough Field, and through Watermills 

 to the Chase. It w^as a splendid hunt, with never a 

 check from Healing Field, and the time just fifty minutes 

 from Maud Hole. The whole field was terribly squandered, 

 and nearly all the horses were very beat. The huntsman 

 and Messrs. S. Robson, P. Skipworth, and J. Smith had 

 the best of it all the way, and next came the first 

 whipper-in. Will Mason, and Messrs. J. Uppleby and 

 Allington. " The rest nowhere 1 " Hounds soon had four 

 or five brace of foxes in front of them in the Chase, and 

 after running from fox to fox for about fifty minutes, the 

 huntsman stopped them. 



But a really remarkable run — quite one of the historic 

 runs of the Hunt — was that which took place on February 

 22nd, when hounds got on to the line of a travelling fox 

 between Eedbourne and Waddingham, and killed him at 

 Torksey, full sixteen miles away as the crow flies. Hounds 

 must have run very straight, and most of the country 

 must have been uninclosed, for they did it in an hour and 

 forty minutes. AVill makes it "seventeen or eighteen 

 miles from point to point," but I think he slightly over- 

 estimates it. I calculate that hounds ran about nineteen 



