266 FOX-HUNTING IN THE SHIRES 



and solemnity of the expression of the dog pack 

 give them an appearance of size and solidity even 

 out of proportion to their inches, while the keen 

 and wistful look of the bitches, with their lighter 

 heads, suggests rather the idea of grace and speed 

 than strength. 



One of the most perfect things in the whole of 

 the sport of fox-hunting is to see a well-bred pack 

 of bitches after their fox when the scent is sufficient 

 to enable them to hunt, but not strong enough for 

 them to race. There are days, but they are rare 

 here as everywhere, when hounds simply tear along 

 straining, as if the scent was so delicious they could 

 not have enough of it. Then the foxchase becomes 

 a steeplechase, in which the thoroughbred horses 

 and the light weights come to the front. There are 

 perhaps twenty men in the front rank riding almost 

 in line and taking each fence as it comes. One falls ; 

 another refuses, or his horse does ; a horse stops for 

 want of condition, or is outpaced ; and, perhaps 

 of the twenty, twelve are actually there to see the 

 hounds run into their fox at the end of five-and- 

 twenty minutes. It is a hard and brutal fact that 

 of the three hundred people who started, two hundred 

 and eighty have never seen the hounds at all till 

 they dribble up into the field where the huntsman 

 is breaking up his fox. This is not the most enjoy- 

 able phase of hunting. That comes to the majority 

 with a more ordinary scent. It is something like 

 this. You trot down the street of a long straggling 

 village with one of the ugliest of modern churches on 

 your left. Just where the road turns over the bridge 

 there spreads out before your eyes a panorama of 

 wide grass fields. On your right is a sloping hill 

 crowned by a most conspicuous clump of trees. In 



