64 EACECOURSE AND COVERT SIDE. 



into a ride the aspect of things is picturesque but 

 not promising. 



'* Too many leaves on the ground for scent," 

 an oil sportsman shrewdly opiues. And they 

 are beech leaves, too, which for some reason or 

 other seem to favour the foxes more than the 

 hounds. 



But stop! That's like business, we rejoice 

 to think, as a challenge is generally acknowledged 

 by the pack, and there is the fox, surely enough, 

 a cub, but a well-grown one, stealing along 

 through the underwood. Here, too, comes a 

 hound, but just at the moment a halloa is heard 

 from the other end of the woods, and we pound 

 away down the drive. This, I am told, is 

 Assheton Copse, so called because it was a 

 favourite spot with Assheton Smith (whose 

 mausoleum is visible through the trees in the 

 valley below us), and it ought to hold foxes. As 

 a matter of fact it holds too many, for there is 

 apparently a third about now, and we wait 

 irresolutely near where some hurdles have been 

 put up in the copse. Some of the pedestrians 

 have climbed up here, several women among 

 them, and all of a sudden another halloa resounds 

 through the trees, and the fox appears, heading 

 for these hurdles, over which he lightly slips, one 

 excited female, with a baby in her arms more- 



