38 



THE SPORT OF KINGS 



as a hare is put up from her form. " You know he 

 is there ; go and find him," will be his feeling, and 

 he almost expects that the tufters will draw up to 

 him, bustle him about the covert till he has made 

 up his mind to break, and there is an end of that 

 part of the proceedings. Perhaps this may be the 

 case when the ideal prevails. When the real pre- 

 vails, when scent is nil — as it was on the occasion 

 of my visit — something very different takes place. 

 Let me try to give some explanation of what 

 stag-hunting is like on a bad scenting day, and pace 

 my bruising friends, of the beauties which it presents. 

 The fixture was Exford, and they proceeded, I think, 

 to Dunkery, where a stag had been harboured. The 

 covert — or, perhaps, I ought to say the range of 

 coverts — is V-shaped, and as Anthony proceeded 

 to draw with his tufters, a hind, and a remarkably 

 fine one, trotted leisurely away within a couple of 

 hundred yards of him ; three or more hinds were 

 seen afterwards, but Cervus major remained unseen. 

 Then, with a couple and a half more tufters added, 

 Cutcombe Covert was tried, and hounds spoke, and 

 hinds were seen, and once I saw a stag, but this 

 was when hounds were over at the Timberscombe 

 side. At the Timberscombe side of the road there 

 was some very pretty tufting, but to a man used 

 to fox-hunting there was a lack of the cry of the 

 full pack, which was occasionally puzzling. As I 

 galloped up the road in the wake of the harbourer, 

 I was much struck by the quickness with which he 

 discerned, as he galloped along at top pace, that 

 the stag had crossed the road. To pull up his 

 horse, and say, " He has gone in here," was the work 

 of a moment, and it was an exhibition of skilled 

 woodcraft which could not fail to appeal to any one 



