CHAPTER XII. 



THE OLD YEAR OUT. 



'HE old year went out happily enough through 

 the medmm of the Qaorn — who brought off a 

 ,2Jli« hard and excellent run, and wound up 1883 in 

 befitting fashion. From Curate's Gorse they ran over an 

 immense tract of good ground between the hours of twelve 

 and four thirty — scouring, in fact, nearly the whole of their 

 Monday country. A slice of the vale of Bel voir, as we 

 all know, dovetails into Quorn territory between AVidmer- 

 pool and Wartnaby — the prettiest grass lining the basin 

 and continuing over the hills that rise on three sides. 

 Crossing, re-crossing, and circling it now, hounds first 

 spent an hour and a half within and about this charming 

 amphitheatre — then passing over the Wartnaby heights, 

 worked westward along the broad slope above the Valley 

 of the Wreake, till they had nearly reached Ratcliffe : 

 finally hunting till dark beyond Segrave and Burton. 

 How many foxes they ran it would be impossible to say ; 

 but apparently they were never off a line from find to 

 finish. Had they killed their fox, as seemed inevitable 

 when after the first hour he lay down in a fallow field, 

 the run might have taken rank with almost any of the 



