TAKING THE FLOOR 413 



veteran who carried a pink coat. The hist named was 

 best typified in thegrand personage of Colonel Anstruther- 

 Thomson, looking little less stalwart, if somewhat more 

 snowbeaten, than when, after the great Waterloo Run, he 

 walked into the Market Harboro' ball-room, to be welcomed 

 bv the plaudits of three hundred. 



Next morning there was to have been hunting by the 

 Atherstone at Coton House at 11.45, t»y the Pytchley at 

 10.45 ; and at 4 A.M. it was thawing merrily, or seemed to 

 be. But by ten o'clock the roads were as glass. The 

 Atherstone looked at themselves in it, and turned back. 

 The Pytchlev, on high ground, went still higher, and 

 hunted — where do you think for choice. Cold Ashby ! It 

 seems that, as you may know, the instinct of all hunted 

 animals is to make their way upwards. Whether it be due 

 to this natural prompting, or whether the attraction be Mr. 

 Hazlehurst's guardian faculty, I am unable to say ; but 

 the fact remains that, in proportion to its extent of covert, 

 Cold Ashby is now as fully foxed as was Misterton during 

 his long tenancy. Foxes at any rate take little heed of 

 the cold, nor for that matter does Will Goodall, one of 

 their best friends. They have a way of mutually keeping 

 each other warm. But, beyond cooling down the tem- 

 perature of overnight, 1 fancy very few other people 

 extracted much pleasure out of the blinding snowstorms, 

 during which they roamed, occasionally at speed, round 

 those awful hilltops. The fairest lips turned blue, and 

 quivered piteously in the bitter cold ; and strong men 

 looked blanched and bloodless, as two days previous on 

 the hills of Hemplow adjoining. Assuredly those twin 

 occasions are frozen hard into many a memory. 



Were you, by chance, brought up in an agricultural 

 district, and so made familiar with the ordinary operations 

 of tillage and root-growing? If so, you will appreciate a 

 comment on the situation delivered by a worthy farmer 

 who is in the habit of seeing a great deal of sport on a 

 verv tiny pony. "Well," said he, after looking on for 

 some time at the exhilarating process of unearthing a fox 

 from out a drain, " there isn't many days when fox-hunting 

 is no better fun than turnip-cleaning ; but, blame me, if 



