loo THE BEST OF THE FUN 



Valiant" — leaving remainder to be filled in after hunting. 

 Surely he had forgotten that the morrow was ist April, 

 or he would never have initiated such an undertaking on 

 a date so fraught with disappointment and deception ! 



At any rate the final entry — -the only entry that Hunt- 

 ing Journal is ever to contain — is limited to the sentence : 

 "That brute Valiant put me into the brook twice" — with 

 one word condemning Valiant and the diary alike to 

 contemptuous oblivion. 



CHAPTER XVI 



NORTHERN COUNTRIES 



" I knows no more melancholic ceremony than takin' the string out 

 of one's 'at and foldin' hup the old red rag at the end of the season — a 

 rag unlike all other rags, the dearer and more hinterestin' the older and 

 more worthless it becomes." — Jorrochs' " Sport'in Lectori 



Apt and appropriate enough already is the above text to 

 the majority of your hunting readers. I, on the contrary, 

 having brought my old red rag — or, what is tantamount 

 to it, my old black swallow-tail — northward (to the very 

 scene whereat these words were written), have there been 

 airing it awhile before consigning it to the lumber-room, 

 or to the back of the fire. For, within smoke-range of 

 Cannie Newcastle, the fox is hunted for weeks after he 

 is at peace in the fashion-grounds of the Shires ; and, 

 if you knew it, or would — you who are not hasting to 

 race your substance away, but cling to fox-huntmg as 

 closely as you can — you might steal in some years even 

 a month from the summer vacation. 



We were fairly baked out of the Grass Countries — 

 grilled, melted, emaciated almost, by those final days of 

 sport and heat. The Sunday Turkish bath — often the 

 most renovating of processes — was on this occasion a 

 mere fruitless farce. Even the hot chamber at 155° 

 could bring exhausted nature to no such melting mood 

 as had the gallops of previous days in open air. " Very 

 hard condition, sir," observed the brawnv masseur, as he 



