1880-81.] A RUN UNSEEN. 333 



jNliddleton going Imrtl on ]\Iiisketeer to reach alongside — first 

 ^vhip driving knowledge into a stickey one, by help of example 

 and ding-dong determination. Greasy stile and broad-plashed 

 hedge furrows lying right and furrows lying wrong — but good 

 going now, and the pace tremendous. As far as you see from 

 the distance, there is no one else " in it." Few others started ; 

 none others kept up the pace. A parallel lane has served a 

 dozen, who reach the Melton turnpike at Kirby as soon as any. 

 These have seen the chase all the way, without hazard or 

 the trouble of the intermediate fences. The same order 

 meantime has been maintained by those riding the line, while 

 with a screaming scent hounds flew over the grass pastures, as 

 the chase bent a crescent shape across the wind — working 

 towards jNIelton instead of at one time towards Cream Gorse. 

 A mile or so beyond Kirby, a great fox is plamly to be seen 

 toiling across a field on the left, just before hounds reached 

 the road from the right (fifteen minutes exactly, they tell me). 

 A few odd minutes more, and the pack is stopped on the 

 railway embankment, where many a fox has been bred, where 

 many a fox has got to ground before, and whence a train is 

 now to be seen issuing in full steam from ]\Ielton Station. 

 Captain and Mrs. Stirling, Messrs. Coupland Adair, Peak, 

 Harrison, and half a dozen others form nearly all the party up 

 at the moment. 



A RUN UNSEEN. 



Tuesday, Xovcmhcr 7th. 



The Cottesmore have had a great good run over their best 

 country. And the shameful fact has to be recorded that not a 

 soul saw it ! A spoilt dinner, a vexed evening, is a harvest 

 that ought to be reaped to-night by three hundred foiled 

 labourers — whose toil has been in vain, Avhose bread has turned 

 sour in their mouths, and who think just a tenth part of them- 

 selves as when they went out this morning. Yes, the mournful. 



