3o8 THE BEST OF THE FUN 



CHAPTER XLVI 



SPORT AT LAST 



" Crick — the very sound of it is crisp as Southdown 

 mutton " wrote many years ago the only man who could 

 ever do justice to fox-hunting. Even he — our Homer, 

 our master of thought and sport, my kindly mentor — never 

 conceived anything happier than the gallop of to-day, from 

 a Crick meet. My prosy pen shall tackle it if it can : and 

 plain descript shall take the place of poesy. 



What do we know of scent ? what do we know of the like- 

 lihood of fox-hunting ? Here was Wednesday ushered in 

 wdth violent gale and the glass at its lowest dip ! Prediction 

 at such time would have been vain almost to impertinence. 

 But I would rather have a storm well burst than a squall 

 coming on — would not you ? The storm this morning raged 

 upon us. It had spent itself for a while before we drew 

 Lilbourne Gorse, soon after midday. Here my tale begins. 

 I should have told you, though, that hardly ever before 

 had so small a meet been witnessed at Crick. There were 

 scarcely more people than I see opposite me as I write, in 

 the Pytchley Hunt print of 1852. Only those intent upon 

 the business of fox-hunting had cared to face the morning : 

 and thus you will understand my statement — without 

 prejudice to the run — that most of us succeeded in seeing 

 the sport. The run of which I am about to tell you was 

 no " cut-'em-down " steeplechase, in which at most only 

 four or five men could share. But it was a fast gallop of 

 over half-an-hour without any positive check ; and it owed 

 its transcendent charm to the beauty and rideability of the 

 country, to the paucity of the field, to the excellence of 

 the pace, and to the soundness of the ground. One 

 ploughed field at most could you have entered ; and this 

 you might easily avoid. 1 think myself happy indeed in 

 the fact that, within a fortnight, I have seen hounds run 

 hard for a half-a-dozen miles over the very cream of the 

 Quorn and the cream of the Pytchley countries. 



Well, here are names which go to make up almost the 

 whole of Wednesday's field, December 17, 1893. Some 



