POINTS OF ETIQUETTE 135 



bility they are neither genius nor fool, they know 

 a great deal more about hunting than you do. 

 One thing which I think is particularly unfair, is 

 that when a man has expressed an opinion un- 

 favourable to a certain line of action which a 

 huntsman has adopted, he continues to express 

 the same opinion after it has been clearly shown 

 to him that the huntsman was right. And I 

 would point out that many a time a huntsman's 

 cast is the correct one, even if it should fail to be 

 successful. 



Here is a case in point. Hounds had been 

 running with a catchy scent for some twenty 

 minutes, and they checked. There was a big 

 wind blowing, the bulk of the field were on the 

 right of hounds, and close to the right of the 

 field was a large village. The huntsman made 

 his cast, and immediately his critics began to " ask 

 questions." " Why on earth is Jim going there? " 

 said they. " It is plain that the fox has not gone 

 there." And so it was when Jim had made his cast 

 and failed to hit off" the line of his fox. But I 

 wonder what any man who understood fox-hunting 

 would have thought of his powers as a huntsman 

 if he had not made a down-wind cast in the direc- 

 tion of a well-known covert before doing anything 

 else. The event proved that had he made an 

 up-wind cast he would have hit off, and most 

 likely have killed his fox. What really happened 

 was this : the fox had turned sharply to the right 

 down a deep gutter, eager horsemen had pressed 

 hounds a field over the line ; the horsemen who 

 had not done the mischief kept riding on as if all 

 that was to be done to recover the line was to 

 persevere in the direction in which they were 



