HILL AND DALE. 75 



raises liis white mask inquiringly. By Jove, lie's a bold 

 one ! A dasli for tlie hedge, and he is away down the 

 -wind — defying alike the fifty pair of eyes of which he has 

 to run the gauntlet, and the eighteen couple of noisy 

 ladies making merry over his departure. Dark, cold, and 

 drizzly is the day — a keen contrast to the weather that 

 has served us up such sport in the past fortnight. The 

 high-level country, too, above Eagdale is a cold wet soil, 

 that in farming parlance will " scarcely carry a goose to 

 the acre." But still, and again, there is a rattling scent; 

 and — what is nine points of the essential law of a run — 

 hounds are away on the back of their fox. 



Everybody who would could get a start to-day ; and 

 with this advantaire — in addition to that of a line in itself 

 not too difficult, and rendered still more easy by the pro- 

 pinquity of a parallel road into which men could drop at 

 almost any minute — almost everyone might see part or 

 whole of the run in question. ]\Iany of us, even most of 

 us (our conscience may bid us confess) rode to men rather 

 than to hounds during part of those first flying sixteen 

 minutes across the flat to Dalby Wood ; others were 

 probably baffled and liindcred by the ironstone-waggon 

 way on the Dalby hillside ; and many more were certainly 

 blown and beat after climbing the heights of Little Bel- 

 voir and pulling out our timepieces to settle eight-and- 

 twenty minutes as the reckoning to the first slight check. 

 Yes, we were all near enough to keep the watch at work 

 to-day; and, as we had one and all fliiled to take the time 

 in the great run of Friday w^eek, each of us remembered 

 to mark it to a second to-day. 



