NORTHERN COUNTRIES 117 



will remain in years to come a monument to poor Cornish, 

 who worked hard for its completion). A pretty find and 

 a flying start ! Two fields of rank wet grass — the second 

 field, bordered by Bavington Plantation, demonstrating, if 

 it needed demonstration, how very fleet a pack are the 

 Tynedale. They (the dog pack) could travel the level 

 greensward without coming back to the fastest horse of 

 the morning — and that, I fancy, was the Master's. Yet 

 only a day or two ago Mr. Dent, trainer of Fullerton, 

 assured me in all sincerity, and I cannot but accept his 

 evidence, that a good horse can beat the fastest of grey- 

 hounds for a mile ! If this be true, tell me not then 

 that foxhounds are, even for a mile on the flat, as fast as 

 horses ! 



A sharp twist to the right ! Two more damp grass- 

 fields ; two more open gateways ; some ridge-and-furrow, 

 of mild description, as compared with what we rock upon 

 in our Midland hemisphere ; a stone wall, four feet high 

 to the first comer, about two feet by the time we reach it ; 

 next a stone-faced bank with a ditch on either side ; then 

 a narrower bank with rail on top that scatters readily ; 

 then a broken watercourse — thus half-a-dozen twenty- 

 acre fields traversed ; and lastly an old gate, only left 

 up because not worth moving to mend, and so, eminently 

 suited either to be jumped or broken. Forty minutes of 

 such entertainment would have been delightful — those 

 twelve minutes serving merely for sample, fast, vigorous, 

 and safe. Next, they met with a roaming fox ; and, with 

 some little outside assistance, as against a reputed lamb- 

 killer, they pulled him down quickly. 



But the run of the day — fifty minutes' quick and 

 capital hunting, and embracing a half-circle whose width 

 was fully five miles — began from Greatlaw, another square 

 larch plantation. 



Grass still, and continually, by the adjoining covert of 

 Kid law, by the right of Kirk Harle and Little Harle Tower, 

 across the stone-bottomed river Wansbeck to Wallington 

 Hall (Sir G. Trevelyan's), which is situated, apparently, on 

 the very march with the Morpeth (this first quarter hour 

 very fast). Back at hunting pace then along the beck. 



