FOX-HUNTING 7 



I remember once being out at the latter end of 

 the season with a famous pack. We had drawn 

 covert after covert without a sign of a fox. 

 Then we drew a spinney of some twenty or thirty 

 acres. There was not much undergrowth, but it 

 was easy to see by those who would take the 

 trouble to look that there had been a fox there. 

 Hounds could not speak to the line, they could 

 not own it in any way, but there was a special 

 alertness about them, which said as plainly as 

 words, " Our friend has been about some time, 

 not so long since." There was a large wood a 

 field off, and our huntsman drew his hounds out 

 of the spinney very quietly, and slipped along to 

 that wood. Some of us went into the wood ; the 

 bulk of the field rode outside. People were 

 talking as usual, and said there was no fox there, 

 but it was, to those who looked, easy to see the 

 hounds were getting keener and keener. In the 

 middle of the wood one or two feathered, and then 

 in a fraction of a second they flew together, like a 

 man clapping his hands, and opening all at once, 

 drove on at a rare pace. We had a good run, and 

 we killed our fox, but the best part of that run 

 was the find. I have hunted more seasons than I 

 quite care to talk about, but I never saw such a 

 perfect find as that. And it is in such apparently 

 little things as these that the great charm of hunt- 

 ing lies. Never do exactly similar circumstances 

 take place. There is a constant freshness of 

 incident, which doubtless exists in other sports, 

 but in none in so remarkable a degree as it does 

 in fox-hunting. 



Perhaps a word may be devoted to our critics. 

 We fox -hunters have been called "red-coated 



