A WEEK AT MELTON 43 



" What hounds are they ? " " Mr. Tailby's " ; and 

 they had come ten miles in a straight hne in the cub- 

 hunting season from Glen Oaks. 



Every Tuesday, then, and every alternate Saturday 

 the Melton man has the Cottesmore within reach. Of 

 these fixtures Stapleford Park is one of the nearest, 

 about four miles away, and Leesthorpe, perhaps the 

 most famous of all, though if the latter has the Punch- 

 bowl and Ranksborough, the former will possibly offer 

 you a chance of distinction at the Whissendine. There 

 are, in fact, two brooks, each of which claims to be the 

 true Whissendine, but, whichever you fall into, the 

 results are much the same. The streams vary in 

 width in different places, and no doubt it was one of 

 these narrower spots Lord Gardner was racing at, when 

 he made his historic boast, " A fig for the Whissendine." 

 At all events you may meet the brooks so called on a 

 Tuesday or alternate Saturday, quite as often as you 

 like. 



Ranksborough is of course the most famous of 

 Cottesmore coverts. It has been sung by Mr. Bromley 

 Davenport in the best song of the saddle ever written, 

 " The Dream of the Old Meltonian." Every writer 

 on hunting has spoken its praises. Ranksborough is 

 a straggling covert on the slope of a low hill, and, look 

 which way you will from its outskirts, you see a hunting 

 country that cannot be surpassed. The source of 

 Ranksborough's fame is first the care originally taken 

 of it by the Noel family, themselves the founders of the 

 Cottesmore hunt, and next the beautiful hunting 

 country round it. It was when speaking of Mr. 

 Osbaldeston's run from the Coplow that Nimrod re- 

 marked — and he was riding to Ranksborough at the 

 time — " I really think that if an artist were to paint a 

 panorama and make fox-hunting the subject of it, his 



