1881—82.] ST. martin's SUMMER. 389 



handled the delinquent in the open opposite Baggrave — an 

 hour and a quarter (if I remember right) from the time he first 

 screamed at him from Gaddesby Spinney. Revenge is sweet, 

 and it must have been appetising to whip his brush off in the 

 very field where the previous Friday's fox had shifted his 

 difiiculties on to a fresh comer. 



Satm-day, Nov. 12th, when the Belvoir met at Hose Grange, 

 was equally a fine scenting day, and was marked by one of those 

 specially quick bursts for which the Duke's country has ever 

 been remarkable. They ran clean into their fox in fifteen 

 minutes over the open ! Mr. Sherbrooke (as all our little world 

 knows) built his pretty covert on the bank of the Smite, to 

 command the best of the Belvoir Vale, and as a link between 

 the hill coverts of the Quorn Widmerpool district and the 

 similar range of Ducal coverts on the high ground of Harby, 

 Piper Hole, &c. Very grateful should be the frequenters of 

 both countries, as I shall endeavom- to show. 



An excellent, but not overwhelming, field saw the covert in 

 question drawn on Satm'day. The gorse has been levelled by 

 the severity of winters past ; but the other half is a few feet 

 high in sprouting blackthorn. A rather meagre fox showed 

 himself twice before he would fight. Then he chose the farther 

 side of the little river for his early battle-ground. So there 

 was a hurrying forth over the wooden bridge, quite as early as 

 hounds could clear themselves from the covert. A first fence 

 should not, in common fairness, have presented only one open- 

 ing in its tangled length. A hmidred eager people, and hounds 

 running hard ! Manners are virtue at such a moment — and 

 happily, virtue reigns supreme in Shhe-land. But a second 

 fence really need not have been an exact repetition of the first. 

 It was taxing consideration for others almost too high. Then 

 the pack turned over the Smite. There was no following 

 them, with a dense bullfinch fringing the stream (it strikes me 

 this is a half sentence I have written before — re the same crude 

 watercourse). A very plain, but very new, oxer barred passage 

 alongside. The ice (or the initial rail) had only to be broken ; 



