1872-73.] A EED LETTER WEEK. 85 



clay. After passing the morning in a long slow hunt from 

 Stapleford Park, containing no particular feature beyond its 

 dulness, they found themselves close to Eanksborough — which 

 has quite risen again to its former strength and fame. One of 

 the woodland foxes, probably disturbed from his home by the 

 Quorn foray of the week before, had taken up a temporar}' 

 lodgment here, and now evacuated so hastily that numbers of 

 the field never heard of a find until too late to take any advan- 

 tage of it. Quick as he shpped away at the top, the pack were 

 out almost as quickly. From that moment till the run was 

 over, they faiiiy trod upon his heels, and coursed him with the 

 determined, unfaltering swiftness that is the quintessence of a 

 real Leicestershire burst. Having once got his head clear by 

 rounding the long wood under Cold Overton, he held it straight 

 and unflinchingij'- over the grass till he made good the shelter of 

 Owston Wood. From the moment of starting it was a race for 

 the swift and for the stout — no getting a pull at your horse 

 throughout. It was a run, in fact, the enjoyment of which de- 

 pended in every degTee on the blood, condition, and staying 

 powers of your steed. The fences were comparatively easy — 

 or, at all events, were invested with difficulty only by the ex- 

 tremity of the pace ; but the gTass was holding, even on the 

 ridges, and sticky as resin in the furrows. A hundred men were 

 battling over the pastures below Cold Overton, fifty were in the 

 strife as they passed above Knossington, and some five were in 

 time to see the head of the pack enter Owston Wood. Of the 

 hounds themselves, there were stragglers some two fields back 

 — not from any deficiency on their part, but rather because they 

 were so evenly matched that the tail hounds could never make 

 up lost ground. 



Above Cold Overton village there were many causes to play 

 havoc with the field. The breasted ascent had thickened the 

 respiration of anything of at all inferior tj-pe or inferior condi- 

 tion ; several quick riders bore to the left with an eye to Orton 

 Park Wood ; some eschewed a deep ridge-and-fm-row, into which 

 the smoothest galloper pitched with the same apparently hope- 



