ISO THE BEST SEASON' ON RECORD. 



deed rather than supplicatory — awed into silence tliese 

 noisy cherubs ; the almost quivering horsemen huddled 

 in hushed anxiety within the covert ; reynard slipped 

 through his clamorous foes, and quickly made another 

 bold bid for safety. This time he was half-way up the 

 first narrow grass held, ere the voice he must have 

 remembered so well struck appallingl}^ into his ears ; 

 followed by scream after scream that he may have 

 deemed only the outcry of a railway engine, but which 

 were bringing six-and-thirty fierce fleet ladies hot upon 

 his track. How they scrambled, dodged, and darted 

 out of covert — past a crowd that could hardly contain 

 itself to wait their coming, so keenly did the memory of 

 the previous chance, the previous success, or the previous 

 disappointment assert itself Now they are away — and 

 in a moment clear of us all. Now you may cut and 

 thrust, gallop and go, to your heart's content — to a 

 burning scent and to as f\ist a pack as ever beat horses. 

 The same fox, no one doubts ; the same line, everyone 

 prays. Now for putting old Hearsay to the test — and, 

 if he told us a cracker, to jump on his back. A neat 

 new cut-and-laid still bears the marks of where he told 

 us five men rolled throu£>'h its thorn-covered ditch abreast. 

 That much was true, at all events, for here's a clean gap, 

 never left by hedgecutter, for us to shoot in our stride. 

 Ah, they are turning for Tilton and its woods, and our 

 conjured gallop will, after all, be a very myth. No, 

 forrard they are — breasting the hillside, a field before us. 

 Here's the open cross-road of which we had been told ; 

 here's the white gate staring us in the iace ; and here's 



