BAGGRAVE. 55 



way, is to be replanted; and the Prince of Wales 

 " Gorse " will in future exist in the form of less perish- 

 able blackthorn). 



Yes, a brace of foxes were found in the Spinney — one 

 fell into hounds' mouths at once, the other had to bend 

 his flight whither he could, and make his point after- 

 wards as opportunity might offer. So, as he broke away 

 towards Barkby Holt, we were released from our station 

 at the opposite corner, to labour round over rough ridge- 

 and-furrow — wonderinc: the while whether we should 

 ever see hounds again, whether if we did our horses 

 would have any Avind left in them, whether labour was 

 very cheap in the days when the tillers of the soil thus 

 distorted the face of the earth, whether we had not 

 chosen the wrong way round, with a dozen other relevant 

 and irrelevant speculations. For ridge-and-furrow that 

 is deep enough to reduce each stride of a horse to a 

 limited unit, like a note of a piano as compared to that 

 of fiddle or flute, inflicts on the rider a prolonged period 

 of thought and anxiety that is positively distressing. 

 Fast horses and slow horses, short backs and long backs, 

 good shoulders and bad — all seemed to make about equal 

 speed over the chopping sea — and now we had circled 

 the covert to find hounds driving up the wind a field 

 away. For a few^ minutes they beat even the men who 

 cut their way to them as they bent — and this, though 

 neither bullfinch, rail, nor high-built fence was shirked 

 in favour of the ready gates. Your humble servant 

 happened, by what chance matters not, to be brought 

 up alongside one of these fences as the rush came on, 



