1900] JIM SMITH. 179 



Smith flew the Humberston Beck on the grey horse, 

 Belvoir (the best horse he ever rode, he says), which 

 was then a coffee-coloured torrent runnino- bank hiah. 



After some slow work in a storm from the Grimsby 

 Osiers, the chase was set going again in Bradley Wood, 

 the fox beino- found on the Scartho side. The hunt besran 

 slowly, hounds facing the open opposite Mr. Anningson's 

 house (the house in which old Mr. Philipson had enter- 

 tained so many fox-hunters), and with Tennyson's Holt 

 on the right, pegging steadily on till they slowed up in a 

 field of plough. Here Reveller pulled them through, and 

 with a better cry hounds led us on past the workhouse 

 to the outskirts of Grimsby town. Some footballers near 

 the People's Park headed the fox over the road to the 

 Weelsby side, and, leaving Scartho well on the right, he 

 tried to make for AVeelsby Bridge, being frustrated in his 

 first effort by a sheep-dog. Waltham Station lay on the 

 left, and hounds pressed on for three fields in the direction 

 of Holton-le-Clay, till the fox turned short to the left over 

 the railway. Dulcimer doing some good work in the plough 

 as he led hounds between Peeks and the Weelsby coverts 

 and the railway to the bridge. Crossing here, the fox 

 made straight back to Scartho, where I got information 

 from the local earth-stopper that we had a fresh one in 

 front of us. But Smith vows we had not changed, and the 

 man may have made a mistake, for hounds had run to 

 the road at Bradley without once pausing, and so to Mr. 

 Anningson's house, where they came to a check, and 

 Smith dared not hold them on to the wood in the gather- 

 ing gloom. They had been running hard for an hour and 

 a half over a good plough country. Stephen Dickins was 

 not out, so Jack Bell was sadly missed from his place as 

 second whipper-in, where he has shown to more advantage 

 than any one I know. 



Peeks again provided a good fox on February 24th, 

 and he, like the rest of the litter, first made a move for 

 Waltham Station, and being turned left-handed by car- 

 riage folk to Humberston, swung round the village, having 



