46 THE BEST SEASON ON RECORD. 



A sweet valley runs up to Keyliam — tlie grass as rank 

 and the ditches as grossly overgrown as if the meadows 

 had not been stocked (as I believe they had not) for a 

 year past — and all hands scurried on as if a silver cup 

 awaited the foremost. Gladly would we have seen one, 

 filled with any cool compound, ere we had dipped under 

 .Keyiiam village, and mounted the hill beyond. Horses 

 were blowing freel}^ and hounds were a full field ahead — 

 Crash, clatter — what has happened ? A dark horse down 

 in the middle of a field, and a man surely gone to ground, 

 somewhere. No, there's part of him at least has done 

 being rolled over — a round cheerful face, quite pleased 

 with the situation, and leisurely bringing the rest of the 

 remains out after it. Of good hard stuff must that man 

 be made, I warrant me — and none the less that he rode 

 so forward in no scarlet robe, nor, I daresay, nourishes 

 his nerve and muscle on vintage '74 (the milk, they tell 

 me, of the Melton dairy of to-day). 



But how the Quorn lady pack gave other passing proof 

 of its quality by tracking its beaten quarry down a road 

 and at length chasing him to ground in a rabbit hole, was 

 l^retty enough in itself, but gives little more to tell. Thus 

 it need merely be adiled, for the information ot the many 

 whose gauge of a run is its " point," that all the work 

 and incident of the pursuit in question resulted in its end- 

 ing at the very place from which it had started — Hun- 

 gerton Foxholes, to wit. 



On Monday morning last, November 12tli, we first 

 perceived that winter was upon us. A dense cold fog 

 pervaded the valleys ; hoar frost had crystallised the 



