174 THE CREAM OF LEICESTERSHIRE. [Season 



old hall looked down on as gay and gallant a party as ever 

 mustered to the chase under its grey walls. 



To find a fox took little time, for in the spinney at the 

 Fishpond, with its well-stocked larder of wildfowl, one was 

 soon unkennelled, sleek and lusty. Him they routed ruth- 

 lessly from his snug quarters, bidding him leave the bed of 

 comfort for a struggle for his hfe. Swiftly he flashed out of 

 the park, and swiftly did hounds flash after him ; but there 

 was little of s^dftness or flash in the exit of the penned-in 

 crowd. Nay, rather, it was more like the foxhunt of a night- 

 mare, that lingering struggle to edge your way along a wire- 

 fenced road, and through a gateway whereat all the carriages 

 of the county seemed gathered. You could see nothing of the 

 pack ; soon you could not even hear them ; but you knew in 

 your agony that they were running hard, and the misery of 

 helpless restraint well-nigh choked you. At last you are free 

 from the park, but only to issue into a lane, and crush through 

 a farmyard, with perhaps half a hundred more fortunate in 

 front. You nnist gi-ind your teeth and gallop; the foremost 

 are little more than a field ahead ; and now you get a glimpse 

 of the pack streaming a field ahead of them. For a mile or so 

 there is little but grass and gates, but the ridge-and-fm-row 

 rides deep and pumping ; and a second horseman, who ought 

 to have been ten miles behind, or in bed, or anywhere else but 

 here, lets one gate slam in your face. You are a well-disposi- 

 tioned man if you can pass him in silence, and a better still if 

 you glare only straight to your front as you go by him. Now 

 you see one of the leaders down, and, as you reach him, find 

 that Captain Coventry has been picked up unhurt from a fall — 

 as ugly as the one that an equally good gallop from Stapleford 

 brought him two years ago. Now you emerge on to the highroad 

 that leads to the village of Whissendine, clatter along it for a 

 himdred yards, and the hoimds swing across you, pointing 

 their heads for Leesthorpe. Three fields of plough stop them 

 no whit ; not wheat, nor tm-nips, nor fallow can hinder them 

 to-day; and, flying onwards, they leave you no breathing 



