MELTON AT HOME AND ON VISIT 441 



flushed face and panting bosom at once told their own 

 tale. He had lost his horse in the previous scurry, and 

 was now making the best of his way across country on 

 foot, hoping to find his runaway among the crowd, or at 

 least that some one would tender him a lift behind a 

 friendly saddle. The position was pathetic in the extreme, 

 the more so that he failed to reach the covertside in time, 

 and thus met our fox face to face. No matter, he only 

 turned him a hundred yards. (This is our selfish view of 

 the situation. For him, poor man, my heart has been 

 bleeding since the moment I could divest myself of that 

 first selfish thrill. Anxious indeed am I to learn the 

 denouement, as regards his progress and his search for his 

 horse.) Now we rode on across the pastures till half-way 

 to Yelvertoft Fieldside ; then bore up over a ridge of light 

 arable to Cold Ashby village and Firetail Spinney ; saw 

 hounds thread the latter ; then rose the hill gladly with a 

 leftward turn to Thornby. A wide vista of fine grazing 

 ground lay before us, with the wooded heights that sur- 

 round Cottesbrooke looming in the near distance. And 

 across this hounds led us gaily, at what I may term a fair 

 riding pace, not a strand of wire, and scarce a fence un- 

 jumpable. There was one that seemed to border upon 

 the latter character, as far as I could judge, for, of five 

 horses that flew the blackthorn, three failed to reappear on 

 the other side, having been clasped half-way by the broad- 

 dug streamlet beyond the hedge. I fail to remember the 

 exact locality ; but I know that Cottesbrooke was very near, 

 and that the hardest of the white-collared ones, knowing 

 what to expect, very properly preferred a bridge to the 

 needless risk. 



We barely escaped a change, as hounds again swung 

 leftward and upward, for Hazelbeach, a fresh fox, woolly 

 and fat, jumping up within a hundred yards of hounds. 

 The latter, luckily, had their noses down ; and the whippers- 

 in keeping quiet, the chase moved steadily on without a 

 break, though at more measured pace. 



There ought not to have been that check at the gate- 

 way by Hazelbeach Hall. We had no business to have 

 crowded through it when hounds were at fault. They 



