MEX AND MANNERS. 45 



family name, lie left nothing Avliatcver to stand in the 

 way of all who might wish to follow. Such kindly self- 

 sacrifice, however, deserved better fate than that he 

 should have to pursue his charger for two long fields 

 before the latter would consent to be returned to him. 



Meanwhile the fu2,-itive from beneath the hovel was 

 making the most of his new lease of life. Threading 

 hedgerows and plantations by the brookside, he gained 

 yard after yard upon his clamouring pursuers, and at the 

 village of Beeby found himself quite capable of once more 

 flinging down the glove on the open. He should have 

 been stiff and crippled with fatigue and wet. But his 

 heart seemed to grow stouter, and his limbs work freer, 

 with danger realised and love of life fully roused. In a 

 word, he ran straighter, and hounds pressed him far 

 harder now than when he was first forced to run. From 

 the village of Beeby he led them for a final twenty minutes 

 as bright and brisk as — well, the beer of the Beeby 

 brewery just passed. Over the hillside for Scraptoft 

 were pretty grass fields, with some twenty men racing- 

 over them in the blinding sunlight — hounds glancing in 

 sight only now and then like flying-fish in air. The very 

 acme of a Leicestershire burst is — it always seems to me 

 — when liounds go a little quicker than you can — yet 

 when there is free space for every man and every horse 

 to be doing his best, irrespective of others right and left 

 or even in front. We don't see this every day. Either 

 scent or country is generally lacking. But it is very 

 delightful when it comes — and then, and then only, does 

 a good hunter seem to be really at his best. 



