244 THE CUE AM OF LEICESTERSHIRE. [Season 



Three o'clock on a hot sprmg afternoon was the hour, and 

 the circumstances, of the last meet of the season '77-'78 — the 

 Belvoir maintaining the final act. No crowd of brilliant 

 company gathered under the walls of the Ducal Castle ; for 

 Melton had relapsed once more into a tiny market-town. "With 

 two or three exceptions, every lodge in the bright little metro- 

 polis was already empty — save of valets left behind to pack. 

 From these exceptions there sallied forth, in cubhunting garb, 

 the few who were bent on, and could afford the time for, seeing 

 the very end of foxhunting for the season that is now filed and 

 docketed with the past. They went out with no serious 

 thought of hunting in its practical sense. But they were on 

 the spot; and why should not their eyes be gladdened with 

 one more sight and sound of hounds ? Their canter to Belvoir 

 Castle was alone worth a dozen mornings of saddle lounge in 

 the Row. For them there was mile after mile of roadside turf 

 and of scenery sporting and familiar. Over Croxton Park, 

 where the debris of the Race meeting still remained. Along 

 the unenclosed can'iage road to the Belvoir Woods, where 

 bevies of rabbits were sunning themselves at everj'^ bank and 

 hedgerow — their white scuts glancing as brightly before the 

 invader as flying fish before a dolphin. Three o'clock, as I 

 said before, was the hour named ; but the Duke usually gives 

 a liberal margin. So no need to hurry under the sunshine, or 

 to spoil the after-luncheon regalia and its sweet day-dreams — 

 of gallops that are past and gallops that we may yet live to 

 see. You are, as usual, half an hour later than your fellows — 

 in the idleness of your habit and the perversity of your nature 

 — but fear of missing a first run has no power now to drive 

 you forward, in frantic haste and torturing self-reproach. 

 Your shooting-hat is thrust back off" the forehead, that you 

 may bask freely in the coaxing rays ; your reins lie across the 

 pommel, while you flick the daisies with listless thong ; the 

 regalia draws freely, and the hack never kicks a pebble. You 

 are enjoying to the full that state of happy abstraction most 

 fully conveyed in the unclassic expression, " a good moon.'" 



