SPORT IN THE SHIRES 267 



front of you is a lovely valley, and blue and grey, 

 in the distance to the left, lie a line of wooded hills. 

 The hounds turn up to the right through a white 

 gate, and the master leads his followers all into one 

 field where they congregate as near as possible to 

 a hand gate that leads into a small square covert 

 of thick thorn bushes. This covert cannot be more 

 than two or three acres in extent, and it looks like 

 a tiny patch of dark green as you pass it by the road. 

 No one would guess that it was one of the most 

 famous coverts in Leicestershire. 



There is very little talking ; most people have left 

 off smoking ; and there is about the gathering an 

 air of expectation. From hence the start may be 

 a quick one. If you could see round the covert, 

 you would find that there was a knot of foot people 

 on every point of vantage. Half a mile away along 

 the ridge towards which we are facing is a road, and 

 that too is full of bicyclists and foot people. We 

 will hope there are no horsemen trying to skirt for 

 a start, which such people generally lose in two fields 

 after they have fallen in with hounds. If you could 

 see everything and everybody, you would imagine 

 that no fox could go away without being headed. 

 Indeed that is what happens now. No side of this 

 covert is bad for sport, but one is less good than the 

 others, for a couple of miles away is a hilly fastness 

 with several coverts in its recesses between which 

 foxes are wont to play hide-and-seek, and where 

 hounds may spend half a day. It is one of those 

 places where, if you are at the bottom, you wish 

 you were at the top, and when you have climbed the 

 steep sides, you wonder why you were ever such a 

 fool as to leave the bottom. 



On that side the fox breaks, but he runs up against 



