1877—78.] A SCENT OX THE TLOUGH. 205 



as if intent on blood. Ware Wire ! — that horrid sound from 

 which our ears have this season as yet been free ! Good 

 farmers, good friends, who give ns our hunting, give us 

 also our lives ! Forget not that the 1st of November is 

 past, and open not tlie door of welcome with a snare still 

 set that was never meant for us ! The good honest oak- 

 rail oxer yonder, that floors one of the leaders already 

 named, offers, as it were, but a friendly nudge compared 

 with the deadly check of the cold and murderous iron, which 

 gives no warning and gives no quarter. Sydney Smith (who, 

 by-the-bye, had about as much right to descant upon " equita- 

 tion" as your humble servant upon astronomy) gave it as the 

 result of his experience that a fall was not a thing to be afraid 

 of, for that he "always got up after one, like the Three-per- 

 Cents, not a bit the worse for it." But then Sydney Smith 

 never got a cropjjer over Avire when going fast over hard turf; 

 his own misadventures being confined to the boundaries of his 

 Yorkshire parish, and being usually brought about by his cob 

 turning a corner with him rather quicker than he expected. 



The oxer legitimate aforesaid is into the field adjoining the 

 hamlet of Marfield, and the third only from the covert ahead. 

 Some carters in the road have stopped our fox when close to 

 his goal ; the pack turn short with him, but an open drain has 

 saved him, and a stirring gallop is over. Twenty-seven 

 minutes they made it, timing it from the moment of passing 

 the Punchbowl ; and thirty-five may be taken as comprising 

 the whole, from Sir Francis Burdett's Covert. 



A SCENT ON THE PLOUGH. 



Thrussingtox "Wolds is a snug little wood. Foxes are 

 fonder of it, I fancy, than are pursuers ; for most of us have 

 some sore memory linked with it — of how we have here been 

 entangled, and lost some run that we had fully meant to see. 



