LONG POINTS AND THE HEYTHROP. 199 



one was grass, and the bitches streamed up under the 

 hedge, then turned through it into a stubble, which was 

 mown and full of haulm cocks, in the middle of which 

 we threw up. In one corner was a sheepfold and shep- 

 herd making all snug for the night. We asked him, but 

 he was sullen and nasty ; and my impression is that 

 someone jumped off his horse in a rage and offered to 

 fight him; but we worked it down, and the two under- 

 graduates went off in what they thought was the way to 

 Oxford. Then the whipper-in (poor Jack Hazel ton) 

 came up and begged Hall to send him home with the 

 hounds, as they were curling up in twos and threes to 

 sleep on the haulm cocks. Whilst they were being got 

 together I asked the shepherd quietly (after half-a-crown) 

 whether his dog had run him. ' Yes, he did.' That was 

 enough for me; for, of course, our fox was so beat the 

 dog must have killed him. Well, if we had only caught 

 him it would have been perfect. 



Melliak Foster-Melliar." 



My recollections of the hunt which Mr. Foster-Melliar 

 described are very vivid, firstly because I was on a horse which 

 I had been told would not jump water, and there was a biggish 

 brook in the line almost immediately after, the start. The 

 horse jumped it in fine style, but shortly afterwards he gave 

 me a terrible ducking in the old Berks Country by falling 

 into a deep, sullen water cut, not fa!p from Abingdon race- 

 course. In the Heythrop run he had jumped the water like 

 a stag, but with the Old Berks he refused and then slipped 

 in, and I went right under before I got clear of him. But 

 that North Aston day will always live in my memory, for the 

 line was good all the way, and barbed wire had not been 

 invented in those days. As far as I am concerned, trouble 

 only arose when the run was over, and the difficulty of get- 

 ting back to Oxford was encountered. We had a dogcart and 

 tandem at Hopcrofts Holt, but that place was about fifteen 

 miles from where we finished, and it was dark almost imme- 

 diately, while neither Hermon-Hodge nor I had even been in 

 that part of the country before. Moreover, our horses were 

 done to a turn, and quite an hour was lost in our attempts 

 to obtain meal and water at the first hamlet we reached . We 



