BOOTLAXD AND WOODLAND 397 



as he could reach. His saddle had twisted round through 

 his rolling, and, it is unnecessary to add, he was ravenous 

 for substantial food. Beyond this he was little the worse, 

 and his mistress looks forward to riding him during the 

 current week. 



CHAPTER LXIII 



BOOTLAND AND WOODLAND 



Nothing sharper had yet decked our moderate season in 

 Northamptonshire than the bright gallop from Sanders' 

 Gorse on Friday afternoon, December 28, 1894. 



Anything less like sport than the meet of the morning 

 at Althorp Park it would be difficult to conceive. Half-a- 

 dozen redcoats rode among a surging mob of bootmakers, 

 like cavalry doing duty against riot. There were more 

 terriers than hounds ; and, as every available conveyance 

 in Northampton had been chartered to bring all it could 

 to the festive fray, the park-drive might well have been the 

 rail-side at a race meeting. To render the analogy closer, 

 the rush of human beings that swept across the green- 

 sward, when hounds moved on to draw, was for all the 

 world like the onslaught of a racing mob upon a welsher. 

 However, they saw a fox found, they saw it hunted across 

 the park, nay, assisted in no small degree to hunt it, and 

 many of them were in at its death in a stone quarry about 

 a mile away. Fox-hunting and his Lordship would be 

 popular toasts among the shoemakers of the district this 

 evening — no heeltaps, I warrant. 



This function duly completed, we were taken on to 

 Sanders' Gorse, the day still young, and the ground now 

 much warmer than when the free and independent of 

 Northampton first trod the rime in Althorp Park. The 

 veteran Mr. Sanders was duly in readiness for us, seated 

 in his well-known pony-trap. But he must have spent a 

 bad quarter of an hour, while hounds failed to throw a 

 tongue in the beautiful gorse of which he is sponsor and 

 guardian. It was only while we were engaged in draw- 

 ing the adjoining plantation and the enclosure of Cank 



