192 THE CREAM OF LEICESTERSHIRE. [Seasox 



3'ou could 3'eil joyfully as did Mark Twain's miner, whose dead 

 comrade turned up in the stranger treating him at the har. 

 You can hardly helieve in such luck ; but a-ou mustn't stay to 

 chuckle. Pop over the greasy hogbacked stile at once, and 

 you will be in time to witness the finest sight that ever met 

 3'ou even in this hard-riding country — a scene that Ackerman's 

 window could scarcely rival. You have heard, reader, that 

 the bosom of Leicestershire is being scarred and seared by 

 railways crossing it in every direction. Some of them are 

 near completion ; others are only planned, like American cities 

 in their early 3-outli in forest and prau'ie — marked out by 

 double rows of high and thick oak rails that have hitliei'to been 

 held as verging on the unjinnpable. But they might be 

 hurdles now instead of unbreakable timber varying between 

 four and five feet high ; for a dozen men, choosing the firmest 

 spots on the old ridge-and-furrow that, yet uncut by the dese- 

 crating spade, runs at right angles across the projected railway, 

 are flying in and out almost abreast. Lord Carington leads 

 them over on the left, Mr, Tomkinson on the right, while the 

 Marquis of Huntly, Messrs. Frewen, "NVhyte Melville, Flower, 

 Pryor, and Russell, Lords Wicklow and "Wolveiton, Cai)tain 

 Jacobson, and the huntsman, solve the double difficulty almost 

 together. No fall, and scarcely a rail touched by iron or 

 rattled by hoof. You Avould have wagered there were not so 

 many timber jumpers in the county. But 'tis wonderful what 

 virtues are brought out of horses and men when hounds really 

 run ! And now they are streaming down the only two fields of 

 plough to be met with from Burrough Hill to Owston, and cut 

 the road in the Twjrford valley half a mile to the left of that 

 A'illage. The brook is just in front ; but the pack tm*n along 

 its banks for the present and point their heads for Owston. 

 Captain Jacobson cleverly crosses the water by the road, hits 

 off the bridle road beyond, and so escapes the dangers in store 

 for the rest of the party. On over the grass at the same quick 

 determined pace. Are we not trul}', gloriously, embodying 

 the spirit of the " Dream of the old Meltonian," whose 



/ 



