178 THE CREAM OF LEICESTERSHIRE. [Season 



caused loss of time and consequent loss of what might, with 

 any luck, have been a grand run. 



The close of the following week was not marked by such 

 sport that the superb hunting weather led one to expect. If 

 3'ou, reader, who have been entered in the Melton district, and 

 for Avhom the sweets of Ilanksboro' and the Punchbowl have 

 once been distilled, were told that these spots were to be 

 visited to-day — if accordingly you had sent on the pick of j'our 

 stable, while you scattered the mud with a hack that can gallop 

 all the way, and tliat seems rather to prefer your breakfasting 

 ratlier late ; if, moreover, the morning was dull and dark and 

 quiet, the glass rising, and the lightest possible breath of air 

 fanning j'ou from the east — if you had steadily {ohstinatdy, 

 . your *' pal " said) refused overnight to bite the end off a second 

 Claro, had wound up your watch bj^ the sober hour of eleven, 

 and now felt fit and keen as one of these happy Christmas 

 schoolboys — would you not have been sanguine ? Gsiy too, not 

 as " a mere pretender to the name," nor with 



the gaiety of tlioso 

 "Whose headaches nail them to a nooudav bed ; 



but in the full glow of a gallop to covert tliis lovely hunting 

 morning, with a heart full of hope, and in the knowledge that 

 3'ou are casting in your lot with spirits as cheer}' and genial as 

 ever wore jiink or smashed an oak rail. And, as you glanced 

 longingi}' from the top of Ilanksboro' Hill over the green flats 

 that stretched away from j-our feet to Burley, or stood above 

 the Punchbowl, on an apex rising from a sea of historic turf, 

 and conjured up lines that should embrace Pickwell, or 

 Lowesby, or Ashby, would not your ears, too, have been 

 pricked as keenly for a whimper as those of an old hare 

 ])efore harriers ? And would not you, too, have owned to 

 disappointment almost bitter as you moved onwards with 

 the knowledge that two of the best and safest coverts in all 

 Leicestershire had failed to give you a gallop to-da}'? A 

 wild and stormy night had probabl}' to answer for this, and, 



