SPRING WOODLANDS 451 



vociferous than if he had been one of Umra Khan's cap- 

 tives just liberated. He had come late to the meet ; he 

 had informed no one of his intended arrival ; and this was 

 the manner he chose in which to reappear with effect 

 among his friends. (A fact you will please accept as being 

 as unexaggerated as it was startling.) 



In the early afternoon Mr. Inge drew Coombe Wood — 

 a certainty, they said, and a certainty it proved. Hounds 

 showed at once they could drive upon the grass. They 

 ran hotly across the park ; and then hunted through a 

 small wood. Hill Park I fancy. To accompany the pack 

 again upon the grass, the field were called upon to thread 

 quite the eye of a needle, in the shape of a very narrow 

 bridge, guileless of parapet, but having a rail that required 

 jumping on the near side, a small hand-gate to open at the 

 farther end, while a deep watercourse ran below. Happy 

 for yourself and your nervous system if you arrived 

 thereat in good time. I think it was a hateful place — a 

 kind of Devil's Causeway. Beyond this the chase opened 

 out westward, our fox having been headed from a northern 

 course. Along the green valley hounds ran well, and we 

 found ourselves upon the bank of a stream that, like the 

 village akin to it, boasts, I believe, of the bucolic name of 

 Sow. Its banks were deep and its bottom was vague ; and 

 the scene, as usual at such like watercourses in the Shires, 

 was varied in the extreme, comedy and confusion being 

 the reigning elements. Having for my part stood fully 

 five seconds on my own feet, while my horse was collecting 

 his four, one at a time, from underneath him and me, I 

 considered I had done my fair share towards the entertain- 

 ment ; and, accordingly, was glad to ignore all else that 

 I saw going on around me. After the village of Sow, a 

 mile or two's hunting (the spires of Coventry within sight) ; 

 then a stick-heap, from which hounds soon pulled their 

 fox. Time of run, about forty-five minutes- — prolific of 

 fencing ; with the turf in first-rate order for that admirable 

 exercise, according to our notion of a fox-chase in Merry 

 England. 



Rightly enough boasting themselves " the most beauti- 

 ful woodlands in England," that section of the Pytchley 



