SHOEMAKERS AND COATMENDERS i8i 



Far rather would I take my chance upon Exmoor, or go 

 for my hfe upon the Cheviots, than scramble thus dolor- 

 ously along such an eccentric and rain-soaked line as 

 fortune marked out for us on Monday. An ungracious, a 

 barely wholesome sentiment, you will say. But it is 

 evoked, I protest, neither by default of dinner nor de- 

 rangement of liver, nor even by disaster of a good horse 

 lamed. Such influences might easily crop up under the 

 head of accident, and under the same head comes this 

 travail of plough in a country whose hist point and proper 

 point is grass. 



Inverting order, I have left behind the doings of the 

 morning. These were, briefiy, a meet of hounds, of 

 terriers and shoemakers, at Foster's Booth. Bootmaking 

 and badger-baiting, be it known, are concomitant indus- 

 tries in Northamptonshire. Sometimes they are adverse 

 to fox-hunting ; at other times they play in heartily. To get 

 them on our side it is, above all things, desirable to run a 

 fox to ground occasionally where they can join in the fun. 

 Then you dig him to save him. " Must have him out," 

 Tom Firr used to say in the Loughborough neighbour- 

 hood. " Sure to die if we leave him, poor thing." And 

 pathos and the spade invariably carried the day. 



The foxes of to-day were as prophets in their own 

 country. They believed in distinction elsewhere. Our 

 first, from Ascott Thorns, proved also to be a probable 

 hero of a fortnight ago, for he took us much the same line 

 past Litchboro' and left us at Pattishall, having at all 

 events, given us some twenty minutes' quick amusement 

 in a happier land than that of the afternoon. And now I 

 lie by for Wednesday, the Pytchley at Swinford, as you 

 may see duly advertised at the railway stations, set forth 

 in the local papers, and emblazoned on the cards of 

 saddlers and of livery-stable keepers, though never whis- 

 pered to the journals of sport, I have never seen a 

 Swinford meet fail. A Pytchley Wednesday before Christ- 

 mas is as good as a week of life. Not another cigar, I 

 thank you ; but lend me, rather, a cool head and a quick 

 eye for the morrow. 



Were vou one of the two hundred who rode with the 



