A NORTH WARWICKSHIRE SPIN 193 



tormance, the thrice-gallant rider found himself at once 

 overtaken and accosted by, as he tells me, a horse-dealer's 

 man. " Beg pardon, sir ; but I'm ever so much obliged. 

 1 thought you was never a-coming. And I don't know 

 what my master would a-said to me, if my horse had two 

 big legs like yourn is sure to have in the morning ! " 



Who had in the meantime availed themselves quickest 

 of the unbroken opportunity it is difficult for me to assert 

 or recall. But I shall not be very wide of the mark in 

 saying that as the chase swept past Bunker's Hill, leaving 

 that covert to the left, some of the nearest in its wake 

 were : Mr. Yerburgh, in the form of some years ago, 

 Messrs. Graham, J. Adamthwaite, Mrs. Byass, Captains 

 Atherton, Riddell, and Lamb, Messrs. Parsons, F. Charters, 

 &c. And there were others whom one naturally omits 

 "because they are always there" — for example, among 

 our elder riders, Mr. Mills, on a five-year-old of his own 

 breeding ; and Mr. Muntz, weighing sixteen stone and 

 a bittock. 



Eighteen minutes of the primest ; then a momentary 

 check, a second of breathing-time, at the road Dunchurch- 

 to-Southam. Carr put matters right immediately ; and 

 the hunt went on cheerily to the Ihtle covert of Leicester's 

 Piece — twenty-four minutes to this. A good fox or a 

 blown one (or was he both ?) skirted the covert without 

 entering, and held on by Bourton (if I am naming the 

 village correctly), making Wolston Heath or the vague 

 distance his present point. Crossing and skirling the 

 lailway, he got to ground on its banks close to Dun- 

 church Station, having thus completed a sharp, warming 

 half-circle, whose outside points were some four or five 

 miles apart. 



Nor were we left long to chill in the biting breeze. Caw- 

 ston Spinnies quickly set us going once more. Not much 

 of a fox to look at, and he never seemed able to get away 

 from hounds. His earliest efforts were ignoble to a degree, 

 for he tried to hide himself in Bilton village, and then 

 plunged into the labyrinth of the Bilton Grange surround- 

 ings. But he died in worthy fashion. Hounds gave him 

 no peace till he took the country — the beautiful Willoughby 



X 



