318 THE BEST OF THE FUN |rj] 



through, each fence when once you find your place. But 

 to keep touch of a racing pack while at every dip in the 

 ground you are held, it may be for a few seconds, it may 

 be for a good many, is a task we have here seen attempted 

 aforetime and in vain. The huntsman and his party — 

 joined now by Lord Willoughby de Broke, Messrs. Mur- 

 land, Fabling, Adamthwaite, Jameson, Cazenove, Kewley, 

 Simpson, Rhodes, Mr. and Mrs. AUfrey, and others — had 

 perhaps kept too long on the upper ground, but made 

 up leeway rapidly as they followed hounds downward. 

 Turning with them, they, or some of them, encountered 

 three difficulties in turn, while hounds never waited a 

 minute for explanation or reprieve. The first of these was 

 solved by a gate, unexpected and accepted with a gasp ; 

 the second w^as worse than it looked, the key to it being a 

 watering-place where a drinking-trough and its rails re- 

 quired a clever horse or, may be, a man in extremis. The 

 third called for a push into deep thorns and a flounder 

 through a green bog. Then by a ford you may cross the 

 brook after the pack. (How curious and incontrovertible 

 a fact it is that fox and hounds almost invariably point the 

 easiest way !) 



But with these difficulties — these hindrances — the 

 necessity for poking here and craning there — hounds were 

 over the water aild over the rise adjoining the Staverton 

 and Shuckburgh road with two hundred yards' vantage. 

 Now the sunshine bleared the landscape ; and almost in a 

 moment they were lost to view, though the music remained 

 in one's ears like the tinkling of distant sheep-bells. They 

 had threaded one of the gorges that lead to Shuckburgh : 

 and only a few tail-hounds gave a momentary clue. Under 

 the long plantation beneath Shuckburgh the music was an 

 accompaniment but no guide. A blown fox had shirked 

 the hill ; and hounds had swished leftward with him, before 

 men, in the blinding sunshine, could take in the turn. 

 Lord Spencer and one of his whips perceived the sudden 

 double ; the others swung outwards before coming round 

 to the gazing cattle and their comrades within the circle. 



To make short a story already too long, huntsman and 

 party came back by the bridle-road to Catesby, caught 



