328 THE BEST OF THE FUN 



No thought now of wet or cold nor, shall I say, of any- 

 thing disagreeable upon earth ! The merry thunder of 

 four hundred hoofs ! It made one laugh to listen to it. 

 And it made one happy within, to think of all that might be 

 in front, aye, and was. 



Fox and hounds took us by the old canal-dam, with its 

 single gap in the cross fence, over the Braunston Brook for 

 this first time. A game of grab it is for the outlet, 

 " Steady, sirs, steady ! First come, first served ! " and 

 hounds and huntsman must have their proper room. A 

 scent, a scent ; and the country clear ! No, it wasn't. 

 Some lost rustic was wandering afield ; and from him 

 hounds turned with their fox across our right, bending for 

 Wolfhamcote. Often I like, and swear by, the lady pack 

 rather than the dogs. But would they have turned so 

 readily and steadily here as their brothers, or would they 

 have flashed on, in this the first ecstasy of a burst ? The 

 '* big dogs" swung in a moment ; and swung again as our 

 fox recovered his point, leaving Flecknoe on his right. 



From this high-perched village there run — as I have ex- 

 plained once before — several eccentric boundary fences and 

 deep hedged dykes to join the main watercourse in the valley 

 below. Hounds led us again — as they so often do — to the 

 one and only jumping-place at the first of these bottoms. 

 Hunt-servants by instinct and intuition follow their hounds ; 

 so the first whip (as did the second, I remember, last year) 

 galloped straight to this spot, followed by huntsman, by 

 Mr. H. Drage, and by as many as could. Hoiv many could, 

 I thank Heaven I cannot tell you. But this I gather from 

 after-converse, viz. that the drawback to this bright gallop, 

 a drawback common to so many of those evolved in our 

 merry Shires, was the recurrence of these single, one-at-a- 

 time, places. There were, in all, at least three of these ; and 

 of course somebody fell at each, and blocked the way. 



Meanwhile Goodall was cheering hounds onward over 

 a country dear to our hearts, and for whose well-maintained 

 charms we are indebted so deeply to the yeoman of 

 Flecknoe, Staverton, and of the valley of the young Leame 

 — he skimming the fence on the right of the hounds, Mr. C. 

 Beatty making his own course on the left. Towards the 



