42 The Pytchley Hunt, Past and Present, [chap. h. 



Goodall pat his liounds into the well-known covert 

 than 



*'At the end of the gorse, the old farmer in brown 



Is seen on his good little mare, 

 With a grin of delight and a jolly bald crown, 



To hold up his hat in the air. 

 Though at heart he's as keen as if youth were still green. 



Yet (a secret all sportsmen should know) 

 Not a word will he say till the fox is away, 



Then he gives you a real ' Tally Ho ! ' " 



Many a gallant fox has had his home in Lord 

 Spencer^s substitute for the sloping sides of the prettiest 

 covert in Northamptonshire ; but it was not until long 

 after his lordship's lamented death that " Cank the 

 beautiful " was improved from off the face of covert- 

 land. 



A morning spent in scentless Harleston Heath and 

 Nobottle Wood is not usually an exhilarating amuse- 

 ment ; but so long as it is felt that ^* Sandars Gorse " is 

 looming in the future, despair finds no place in the 

 breast of the sanguine sportsman. On three separate 

 occasions in the season of 1883, in a snug piece lying 

 in the north-east corner of the covert, was found the 

 " friend in need/' who was a '^ friend indeed/' and who 

 always made his way to some undiscoverable " bourne/' 

 in the region about Naseby. Each time the gallop was 

 a good one, and a fourth attempt to elude his pursuers 

 would have again proved successful, had not a whip, sent 

 ahead to look about him — to take a mean advantage, 

 some call it — seen the nearly lost, weary one creeping 

 alongside a distant hedge, probably hugging himself in 

 the feeling that having saved his brush, he should now 



