PYTCHLEY BORDERLAND 387 



and thus spent much of their time upon or over the 

 border hne. Meeting at Charwelton, they hunted a fox 

 for two liours from Charwelton osier-bed, via Hinton Gorse 

 (Grafton), the neighbourliood of Griffin's Gorse (Bicester), 

 and spent a niaiivais quart d'heure within the doctor's iron 

 toils, before they regained their starting-point. Now 

 they ran on sharper, by the left of Woodford village, and 

 the game seemed awakening when, suddenly, across the 

 vision of a "twenty minutes' dart and a kill in the open " 

 came the abominable chasm through which the Woodford 

 Brook here wends its way. Too broad to jump at a stand, 

 too steep-sided to admit of fording, it has an aspect ugly 

 as death to the ordinary hunter. With hounds running 

 parallel, we skirted it for a time. When the pack turned 

 across it, we endeavoured to do the same. John Isaac 

 caught it at a loop, and swept down and over it in splendid 

 fashion. Mr. Murland, the bank crumbling beneath him, 

 got over with a fall. Horses would not turn from the 

 stream of horsemen to the stream of water. And oh, 

 ignominy ! we flogged helplessly on the brink. A good, 

 raw Irish horse would have made little of it, especially 

 had he hailed from deep-dyked county Meath. The old 

 hunter of the Shires declined to be trapped ; and stuck 

 his toes obstinately into the turf. Mr. C. Beatty alone 

 succeeded in putting on sufficient pace to follow John's 

 example without a fall. A few others fell over or fell in, 

 and the remainder went round, some gnashing their teeth, 

 a good many perhaps contentedly (like the wandering 

 cowboy, who rides from lanche to ranche seeking work 

 and prays Heaven that he may not get it). After all, their 

 fox went to ground a few fields on ; and again was Goodall 

 robbed of a well-earned mouthful. He had it — I mean 

 his hounds had — very soon afterw^ards, having raced a 

 fox down in a dozen minutes from Church Wood nearly 

 to Charwelton. Finally, from Hogstaff — another of the 

 Fawsley coverts — hounds ran furiously for twenty-five 

 minutes, over the park-like enclosures of the Fawsley 

 >tate, into Badby Wood. 



On Monday I was taken, by inclination, as many a 

 good man betimes from his hearth, from a home meet of 



