The Sport of Our Jtncestors 



road. If the Fox has left the covert somewhere here he 

 may be yours. If not . . . ? But you must have luck 

 on some days, and to-day is one of them. The pack 

 cluster together down a furrow in a ploughed field, and 

 throw their tongues merrily on the grass beyond. Is 

 he your original hunted Fox ? This is one of the 

 glorious uncertainties of the Chase. Anyway he is your 

 hunted Fox now, and will have to look sharp to get out 

 of the way. 



The country becomes less provincial. Grass fields and 

 well-laid fences. The next shelter the Fox may be heading 

 for is a kind of amphitheatre or corrie, with a long, narrow, 

 hanging covert running all round the head of it, and a small 

 wood on each shoulder. This is his point, and the Hounds 

 almost race there. They enter the long hanging covert : 

 you ride along the lower edge. You can see all over it 

 right up to the top fence. To-day does not seem to be a 

 good scenting day in covert, or else the Fox is sinking, for 

 now they can hardly own him. This last explanation is 

 the true one, because you catch sight of him a hundred yards 

 ahead of the Hounds, crawling along dead beaten just inside 

 the top fence. The Hounds are all below him, and cannot 

 wind him or see him. You daren't holloa, for if you did 

 they would all come down to you and make matters worse. 

 You would give the wide world for Jim or Ted to be level 

 with you along the top to show him to them. But Ted 

 has quite rightly lost his start from the woodland by hang- 

 ing back and is not here, and Jim has rather rashly got too 



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