238 HUNTING. 



The favourite part of this fine and large country is that 

 known as the Wednesday or Rugby district. The most notable 

 meets hereabouts are Lilbourne Village, Stamford Hall, Kilworth 

 Hall, Yelvertoft, Cold Ashby, and Crick, almost as historic a 

 name as Billesdon. Its fame arose from a marvellous run into 

 Oxfordshire after a fox found in a hedgerow. A covert was 

 then made, the horses were prepared for it, says 'The Druid,' 

 as if for the Derby. From Stamford to Misterton or the 

 Hemplows ; from Cold Ashby to the latter hills ; from Lil- 

 bourne to Crick or Stamford, are tremendous lines, 'fit for a 

 king,' says ' Brooksby,' ' if that king be but well minded and 

 w^ell mounted.' They take you nearly all over grass, and over 

 fences of various and most uncompromising sorts. On these 

 Wednesdays the crowd is so huge, that a ' Pytchley Wednesday ' 

 has passed into a proverb. ' If,' says the eloquent ' Brooksby,' 

 ' you would learn to what colossal magnitude and manifold 

 variety a hunting field can attain, go out on a Pytchley Wed- 

 nesday to a favourite fixture ! If you would observe how 

 such a field can cordially subject itself to proper discipline, 

 stand at the covert side as one of them ! If, again, you would 

 put your nerve and self-confidence to a thorough test, make 

 yourself an atom in the Niagara-like rush to which the " gone 

 away " is a signal ! If you would mark in its most perfect form 

 the first essential for a foxhound in the Shires, watch the 

 Pytchley bitches sHpping to the front through the mad torrent.' 



On the Market Harboro' side, which is visited on P'ridays 

 and Saturdays alternately with the Weedon side, the fences are 

 terrific. Jem Mason used to say— and no one could speak 

 with greater authority on such matters — that no one could ride 

 the line straight from Waterloo Gorse to Dingley, without three 

 falls, no matter what his horse was. And an authority, who 

 quotes the saying, adds that the ox fences round about Market 

 Harboro' are simply impossible. ' You can't ride the country 

 in its immediate neighbourhood straight,' he says. ' It is my 

 belief,' he declares, with a frankness perhaps more bold than 

 judicious, ' that these ox fences, more than all else, bar the way 



