48 THE BEST OF THE FUN 



Vaughan - Williams, Hatfield, Parsons, Adamthwaite, 

 General Clery, Captain Riddell, Mrs. Byass and Mrs. 

 Clerk, with another lady and gentleman unknown to me, 

 and some few more, besides the Hunt servants. And 

 these I think comprised most of the party that rose Shuck- 

 burgh Hill with the hounds. 



Whether the main earths were stopped I cannot say ; 

 but, instead of going to ground as expected, their fox 

 broke forth almost at once beneath the Wood, and feinted 

 over the great grass fields towards Napton — a section of 

 ground of which I for one am by no means fond on a 

 half-blown horse. But she (I mean the old vixen fox) had 

 not heart, or wind, left for a wider range of country. She 

 swung soon to the village of Lower Shuckburgh to climb 

 the eastern wood and dash past the House, with her head 

 again homeward — while most of the party who had got so 

 far with hounds pulled up peaceably to talk it over. Fifty 

 minutes or so to here, if memory does not fail me. 



A single hound drove forth from the laurels — to meet 

 three-fourths of the field, now reappearing. Yet somehow 

 the fox seems to have passed them all, unseen. This lead- 

 ing hound was stopped for the body ; and then, by a 

 route parallel on the present left, hounds returned quickly 

 to Catesby — the turf more deep than I can attempt to 

 convey, and every ditch a rusty, turbulent stream. A 

 broken and hazardous country at all times is that of 

 Shuckburgh. (I wish my thoughts would not keep turn- 

 ing to the morrow — not its hazards, but its prospective 

 delights and its rich possibilities — while I write on the 

 eve of its tri-weekly Warwickshire Meet.) I was about 

 to describe how one of my most gallant friends, after 

 jumping the ordinary hedge of bended thorn, disappeared 

 as if into a well. A certain amount of scuffle attended 

 the proceeding ; so various anxious friends were prompted 

 to gallop to the scene, by means of a neighbouring gate. 

 Peering down — into an abnormally deep ditch, not a well 

 after all — they descried him just rising to his own feet 

 and from under his horse's hoofs. " Hulloa there, old 

 chap ! Are you all right ? " this being the invariable 

 form of inquiry, very kindly, but conveying under the 



