HILL AND DALE. 77 



ment to-morrow ? Hounds are beyond all reach of 

 mischief, shooting out of sight through the high black 

 hedges. The deep sticky ground will keep us — you on 

 your thoroughbred, me on my lumbering Pegasus — well 

 removed from mischief till the steel is out of us both, and 

 out of that dusky brush besides. You ride honestly in 

 tlieir wake. I plunge at the corner, for the light green 

 turf that shimmers throuirh the bullfinch and that I know 

 will carry old Hairyheels far better than the clay you 

 skim so lightly. Yo-oi ! AVe pull up together at the lane 

 above Ragdale ; the lissome pack darts through a tiny 

 spinney ; and we drive onwards over the most unsaintly 

 pasture in Leicestershire, where the ridge-and-furrow 

 would seem to have been built for a chessboard, with 

 anthills thrown on it as pieces. Not a hole in tlie black 

 bullfinch in front — so we must pull to the right — in luck 

 or cunning avoiding the plough — dash down its cart track 

 with due gratitude for the mud-hivours showered from 

 the front, and make up what ground we can over more 

 wet grass beyond. Shoby Scoles has loomed and been 

 left to the rioht. Our fox means somethini;: better than 

 a point so near. Onward, across the wind they carry it. 

 Men at work, boys at play — even this desolate region 

 would seem to be alive to-da}^ One and all of them 

 have seen the fox — and the fox cared not the whisk of 

 his brush for any of them. A farmer that we could ill 

 afford to spare to the Atherstone (Air. J. Cart) is Avetring 

 his spurs and refreshing his memory in his home country. 

 Now the hunt, at its best and quickest, is being led 1)y 

 another of the true yeoman sort — who could ride to 



