448 



THE BEST OF THE FUN 



Whiting's whitest to protect him in a position alike dehcate 

 and indelicate. For a moment I doubted the poor man 

 might be impaled, and pulled up in that fever of hurried 

 anxiety which makes our query to imply (i) Are you hurt, 

 for your own sake? (2) Are you hurt, to my hindrance? 

 No, he wasn't hurt ; and he had got his horse. But 

 wriggle as he would he could not complete his passage 

 across the thorny channel, till, at last, eager to renew the 

 chase, his captive steed gave a sudden powerful haul at the 

 reins, pulling his master, minus every single button of his 

 waistcoat, into the field beyond, there to set him going 

 again, little the worse except for dishevelment and some 

 loss of wind. 



Another bleak fallow-field, meantime, had given 

 another momentary halt, to which Goodall at once put an 

 end by carrying hounds to the next fence. Through 

 Dingley Wood they hunted over the next brow^, regaining 

 the grass by the help of a young hound (Solitude, I think, 

 her name, but I know she is a daughter of Clasper), and 

 thus pointed towards the valley of the Welland, the small 

 woods of Brampton lying on the next ridge to the right, 

 outlying forts, as it were, to the main chain of the Pytchley 

 Woodlands. As Stoke Albany was reached, the sturdy 

 scent that had favoured everywhere except on the odd 

 strips of plough above mentioned, allowed hounds to drive 

 hard by Major Pearson's house into, and through. Stoke 

 Wood (another outlying fort). Goodall was quick as 

 lightning in piercing the covert, caught a glimpse of his 

 tired fox running the road beyond, and had hounds on his 

 brush in a twinkling. For three fields they coursed him, 

 and, two minutes under the hour, they nailed him as he 

 entered a small plantation, a line dog fox, stiff as a coursed 

 hare. 



Read it how you like, or as my indifferent tracing may 

 have shown it, it was an exceptionally fine and satisfactory 

 hunt, easy to see and readily to be enjoyed. The passage 

 of the railways and their wired vicinity, on the outskirts of 

 Market Harboro' of course put for a little while a bar 

 on the riding, but in no way, fortunately, prevented our 

 seeing hounds at work, or militated against the sterling 



