34 THE BEST OF THE FUN 



then. Twenty-seven minutes as they reach a first fresh- 

 sown wheatfield above Crick village. Five minutes' check, 

 then they hunted on under Cracks Hill, and so forward 

 to what is known as Hensman's House, near West Haddon. 

 But he beat them, owing, I believe, in a great measure to 

 that cold, wet wheatfield and its hindrance at a critical 

 moment, for there was no great holding scent. The run 

 lasted, as I have said, an hour. If I write any more, it 

 will take you nearly that time to read it. 



But I must just add how they afterwards found a 

 brace of foxes at Winwick Warren, and ran one down the 

 Thornby Bottom for about sixteen or seventeen minutes 

 — when they holed him. He bolted of his own accord, 

 and was killed. I shall wound no susceptibilities, I trust, if 

 I venture to say of this pleasant little spin that the prettiest 

 feat of riding it contained was Mr. Muntz's in-and-out of a 

 woolly-fenced lane, and this on a mare by no means easy 

 to steady. 



CHAPTER VI 



THE SHIRES UNDER WATER 



Wednesday, December 2, will do for a fair sample day 

 of our present state, 1891. We are all on the spot, you 

 must understand, and hungering after sport. No other 

 attraction now serves to thin our fields — nor will there be, 

 until a frost shall come with its customary mischief- 

 making. Racing, shooting and fishing are all relegated 

 to a back seat : and apparently there is but one Diana — 

 she who hunts the fox. Never, surely, has she been 

 called upon to play her part upon a wetter, muddier arena 

 than at this moment provided for her even in these fair 

 Grass Countries ! In fact, the state of the ground puts an 

 entirely different aspect upon fox-hunting in the Midlands, 

 as compared with what it wore last year, and the year 

 before, and the year before that. "The more wet, the 

 more sport " has been an accepted doctrine long before 

 you and I — or our fathers — went a-hunting (let me see, I 

 don't think the mothers of many of us were accustomed 



