A NORTH WARWICKSHIRE SPIN 191 



one and all, excellently. But, almost immediately, there 

 came confusion and entanglement at the brook alluded 

 to. There was a little hand-gate bridge, and we had 

 thought the brook hereabouts to be wired or iron-hurdled. 

 But as a matter of fact, while the bridge was frost-glazed 

 to an extent that sent an early comer's horse on to its 

 side between the hand-rails, the brook was not iron- 

 guarded, but easily jumpable, and now quickly and ex- 

 tensively jumped. 



To a screaming scent hounds darted over the big 

 ridge-and-furrow fields beyond, running an arc with the 

 brook, and returning over the latter below Bilton Grange. 

 A second time I found myself gliding over a hand-bridge, 

 while three or four men were recovering themselves from 

 the water on my right, and the pack was flying onwards 

 with a scent I have not seen the like of this winter, well 

 ahead of every one. At this moment we {i.e. the section 

 with which I had cast in my lot) felt as if, try all we knew, 

 we could do nothing right. You who ride to hounds 

 have experienced the distressing sensation — a sensation 

 with which you are likely to make acquaintance nowhere 

 so frequently as with the crowded fields of the Shires. 

 For, accustomed as you may be to numbers, and appre- 

 ciative as you may be of the charms of a great and goodly 

 company, there is no gainsaying the fact that at times we 

 do hamper each other most abjectly. Once rammed into 

 the gate-and-gap stream, especially if that stream be run- 

 ning crookedly, there is nothing in the world will extricate 

 vou — certainly not loss of temper, into which so many of 

 us silently and savagely relapse. You had better surrender 

 at discretion and await a future opportunity, unless, as 

 now, chance should come and fortune favour when least 

 expected. 



Like a bright light in a gloomy sky at that moment 

 seemed the flash of the pack across the distant green- 

 sward, as it turned on the hillside beneath the Grange and 

 struck leftward athwart our front. Mr. C. Mills and half- 

 a-dozen others took in the position at once, rode the in- 

 tervening fences at a sharp angle, and were alongside 

 hounds before the latter hit the Coventry road, at the 



