122 THE BEST SEASON ON EECOKD. 



from tlie trammels of tlie waggonway — though he bears 

 an honourable scar on his cheek for the rest of the day, 

 perhaps for the rest of the week. The covert-lmed 

 glen of Old Hills is at this time just to the right ; and we 

 top the hill to double two more roads, to leave Clawson 

 Thorns wide on the left — and to gallop up to another 

 ironstone railway. (It has been my fate to write of 

 hunting for some fifteen years- — and I aver, in sorrow 

 and in tiuth, that the word railway is at the end of my 

 pen at least fifteen times oftener now than when I was 

 first entered to ink.) An old man fumbles willingly at 

 the padlocked gates by his farmside : Firr rides luck- 

 lessly down to another pair of" white gates some fifty 

 yards away, where there are not even a pair of clumsy 

 willing hands with a key — while in anguish of soul he 

 marks bold and bedraggled" Reynard toiling up the next 

 field, hounds a hundred yards behind him, and a flock of 

 sheep scuttling between. Who shall say that a hunts- 

 man's career is without its agony? To make matters 

 worse, two quarrymen stoutly aver that they have stood 

 for quite a quarter of an hour in the very gateway 

 through which the fox has actually passed ! Such is in- 

 formation from the passing clod, whose eyes, startled 

 from accustomed vacancy or the ground, have risen to 

 the coming fray. But lor the quarrymen, but for the 

 sheep, but for the locked railway gates, that fox might 

 have been handled within half an hour. As it is, he is 

 able to stay above ground for iive-and-forty-minutcs, and 

 to bring his brush safely to the main earths in Goadby 

 Gorse — his point and goal throughout. This little check 



