42 THE CEEAM OF LEICESTERSHIRE. [Season 



with the Blankney to rail down for a look at the Quorn ; had 

 ari'ived rather late at covert ; had been trotting leisurely about 

 in the dense fog, wondering if we are accustomed to look upon 

 daylight as necessary for hunting in Leicestershire ; and, now 

 that the atmosphere had cleared a little, was endeavouring to 

 make use of the no less hazy directions of the natives to enable 

 him to reach the hounds. To a stranger the dialect of the 

 local clodhopjier is probably as useful as Low Dutch ; but 

 there is no mistaking the aboriginal when he sees a fox. If he 

 can do nothing else, he can sound a view holloa — by inborn 

 and hereditary talent rather than tuition — and is never so 

 frantically hai)})y as when he gets the chance. On this occasion 

 there were fifty jiair of lungs, each of which could almost out- 

 scream a steam-engine ; and, to endorse their noisy annouDce- 

 ment, the sweet familiar music of deep ringing tliroats came 

 floating up the vale. " Sixteen, or even twenty couples, we 

 don't consider too many in Lincolnshire ; but perhaps the 

 grass doesn't Avant such a lot as our deep clay. AVhat, nobody 

 with them ! Well, I suppose the huntsman and the held will 

 be up directly ; and an3diow, it won't do to stop them Avlien 

 they are running like this. Forrard, you beauties ! Not so 

 even-coloured as ours perhaps, but they can tackle to their 

 work for all that." 



The howling crowd had turned him down the hill, and, 

 baffled in his first intentions, he now sped awa}^ at right angles, 

 and then threatened to circle back into the woodlands. 

 Perhaj^s he looked back over his shoulders, and disdained to 

 show the Avhite feather to a single pit of pink, a rough rider, and 

 half-a-dozen second-horsemen ; for he turned away again into 

 the open, and struck away hap-hazard as if to pass between the 

 villages of Skeflington and Billesdon. Over the high ground 

 hounds carried it well, and steadily they took it on till two deep 

 fallows puzzled them for a time. Oddly enough, though the 

 foot-people are said to have yelled till the hunt was out of sight, 

 though the melody of the hounds themselves must have been 

 carried far away in the still air, it was not even discovered that 



