A CHAPTER OF EXCUSES 319 



hounds before they reached Dane Hole, but had to succumb 

 to them once again before the pack had reached the covert 

 and were out beyond, forty minutes to a first check, horses 

 all out. If hounds ever went faster, may I, for one, not 

 be asked to catch them. 



Five minutes later we were for a third time back in 

 Dane Hole, and afterwards saw hounds follow a fox for 

 another half-hour. 



This is how I read, and how I venture to write, the 

 course of hounds and men on this Saturday, Charwelton 

 and Shuckburgh being less than a four-mile point, and they 

 ran a circle of twice that distance. 



At Christmas we are bound to accept solicitation, 

 whether in the form of men singing tunes, or no tunes, at 

 the door, or in the less direct subservience which greets 

 you unexpectedly at station or village. We even get it 

 out hunting. (I have no sympathy for, and the less 

 sympathy because I constantly find myself blackmailed by, 

 the red " runners " who, most of them, remain all day at 

 the most convenient public, and hold you up on the way 

 home.) I was fairly caught on Saturday, by the more honest 

 labouring man. He had opened a gate and stood there, 

 not for love of the job, I am fain to believe. When I 

 passed, perhaps the hundredth in order, he touched his 

 hat for the hundredth time. "Thank you," responded I, 

 with my customary liberality. " I've had that afore, a 

 many times," said he, " but I don't seem to get no 

 forrarder ! " A retort that cost me a shilling I can hardly 

 grudge now. 



So goes our open Christmastide, the tide of sympathy, 

 of life with the living, of dream of the dead. Pastors have 

 writ, preachers have preached, on the subject and the 

 occasion times by the thousand. But we need no teaching 

 to tell us that Christmas develops our sympathies — with 

 those who are here and those who have gone ; stretches 

 our heartstrings and bows our heads. There is nothing 

 disrespectful — far from it, there is reverence — in the 

 thought that fox-hunting, the least harmful of all excite- 

 ments, is at once a refuge and a stimulant. 



