A MORNING'S OTTER-HUNTING 29 



the prospects of a good drag, form as sporting and 

 picturesque a scene as it is possible to imagine. 



But we have but Httle time to admire the picture, for 

 the Master, ever anxious to show his followers sport, 

 moves off along the banks of the river, and very shortly 

 after being " put to water," hounds strike a trail under 

 the shelving-bank of a strip of osier beds. A volume of 

 music now gladdens the ears of the field, and helter- 

 skelter go men, women, and youngsters as hard as they 

 can foot it,, their numbers being pretty equally distributed 

 along either bank. 



Ere long a willow-fringed feeder has to be negotiated, 

 and, the banks of the same being rather wide apart for 

 " shank's pony " to jump, those of us who have come out 

 unarmed with leaping poles (those useful but harmless 

 weapons which the extreme order of humanitarians and 

 a certain class of Fleet-street journalists are wont to 

 call " the murderous, death-dealing spears of the cruel 

 otter-hunters "), must either walk half a mile or so up- 

 stream to the nearest foot-bridge or scramble over as 

 best we may. A good many of the followers — not by 

 any means are they all of the fair sex — choose the former 

 evil, and are never seen or heard of again that day. One 

 jolly little, rosy-gilled, rotund man from a neighbouring 

 town rushes gallantly at the obstacle, and lands clean 

 in the middle of some four feet of turbid water and 

 particularly unsavoury mud. Nothing daunted, the 

 little sportsman bobs up smiling, and with head and 

 shoulders decorated with duck-weed and other aquatic 

 vegetation he scrambles up the further bank like an 

 amiable Pater Thamesis. 



The music by this time is growing very much fainter, 



