1874—7:..] THK WEEK OF THE SEASON. 147 



of the Melton -week ; and this was a glorious specimen. Two 

 years ago there was exactly such another bye day at Brooksby 

 — winding up alnd with a magnificent fifty-five minutes' ring 

 (on that occasion from Cream Gorse). 



Half the grand sport of the week has already been chronicled. 

 Thursday, Friday, and Saturdaj' still remain. The two former 

 days had very mucli in connuon over and above the fact of 

 their success. Both were lawn meets of the Quorn ; both 

 were favoured by the happiest accident of scent and country ; 

 and both were distinguished by a sharpness of style and action 

 that deserves the term In-iUicDit. 



Thursday, then, was a bye day, which, as we have remarked 

 before, ever carries with it an invariable felicity of augury and 

 event, at least with the Quorn. There was a cheerful little 

 meet at Brooksby — perhaps a hundred " men of business," 

 with a troop of seconds apparently far out of proportion to the 

 number of comi)etitors assembled. The little spinney of 

 Blciikmore might have produced two foxes with the same ease 

 had there been the half-thousand of a Friday ; but there would, 

 scarcely have been the same fair start and good result as now. 

 Hounds settled at once to their fox, and — to tell the briefest 

 stor}' — rattled him to death in thirty- five minutes along and 

 about the Brooksby and Ptotherby valleys, rolling him over 

 in a burst in which the first check came only after twenty- 

 eight. 



From Cream Gorse there was an initial ten minutes as pro- 

 mising as anything we ever saw, hounds and men both carrying 

 ahead as if each individual were the flyer of the pack or the 

 hunt. The former took the scent across every field abreast, 

 and some twenty of the latter charged their fences in a line — 

 such fences, too, as, without exaggeration, you seldom see 

 jumped in cooler blood. But after a turn over Gaddesby, and 

 with no more imminent point in front than Owston A\'ood or 

 John o' Gaunt, everything in thorough swing, and apparently 

 a run ensured, the prospect was all at once blighted by a dis- 

 pensation which placed two idle members of the working class 



