THE QUORN UNDER LORD LONSDALE 307 



in my rem:iincler-brain many and many a gallop of former 

 years), hounds struck the Baggrave and Hungerton road, 

 upon its brow. The Hungerton Bottom (a hedge-fenced 

 chasm) loomed below, and already the pack were driving 

 down upon it. The Master and huntsman, with Mr. and 

 Mrs. C. Chaplin, Mr. Hames, and several others, dashed 

 off to the left, where the stream runs through an open 

 field. Mr. Kewley, Baron Max de Tuyll, and a large 

 squadron with them, verged right, popped out of the road 

 where a post-and-rail invited, then hurried down the big 

 ox-pasture to the gulch (I know of no English expression 

 to convey notion of the watercourses that intersect our 

 grassy highlands). The corner by the little plantation — the 

 plantation where years ago Firr's horse floundered over a 

 wire and hurt him badly — looked more feasible. There 

 was a cattle-track down to it, and a cattle-track leading 

 beyond it. Surely there must be gap or gate ! And 

 there was — the former, feebly patched. On to the bank 

 and off ; and hounds came across our front with their 

 heads for Quenby. Beside Quenby Plantation they 

 hovered for a moment. The two forces joined ; their fox 

 had been driven leftward and onward, and the gallop 

 continued to Lowesby. A second's hesitation, and they 

 were forward again, faster than ever, but less severely 

 upon us, who now galloped parallel upon the road, all the 

 way to John O'Gaunt. The best of the run was to this 

 point (the railway bridge before the covert — thirty minutes). 

 But a good fox was neither caught nor beat. He travelled 

 the right-hand edge of the covert, and pointing for the 

 Cottesmore Woods, went to ground in the stone quarry by 

 Tilton Station, while a brace of fresh foxes took hounds on 

 for a few fields. You may take Tilton Station as the point, 

 and you cannot, on a rough calculation, make it less than 

 seven miles, run practically straight. I remember well (so 

 will some of you) a very similar line run twice, say ten or 

 a dozen years before, with a fox from Barkby Holt. On the 

 third occasion on which we came to ride after him he was 

 mangy and decrepit, and died at once from his previous 

 exertions and from his chill underground. 



