I was soon up and away again. There seemed some confusion in the run, and the master being out of sight, I followed one of the whips as he struck into a blind path in a wood. It was a tangled mass of briers, but he went in at full pace, and evidently there was no time to be lost. At the other side of the copse there was a set of low bars, and beyond this a small, slimy ditch. My leader cleared the bars, but his horse’s hind feet slipped on the bank of the ditch, and he fell backwards with an ugly kind of sprawl that I had no time to examine, for Dick took the leap easily and soon brought me into a field where, on a little hillock, and quite alone, stood the huntsman, dismounted, holding the dead fox high in his left hand, while with his long-leashed hunting-crop he kept the hungry and howling pack at bay. The master soon came up, as did about a dozen others, including a bright little boy on a light little pony. The fox’s head (mask), tail (brush), and feet (pads) were now cut off and distributed as trophies under the master’s direction. The carcass was then thrown to the pack, that fought and snarled over it until, in a twinkling, the last morsel had disappeared. This was the “death,”—by no means the most engaging part of the amusement. From the find to the killing was only twenty-five minutes, into which had been crowded more excitement and more physical happiness than I had known for many a long day.
The second cover drawn was not far away. With this fox we had two hours’ work, mainly through woods at a walk and with the hounds frequently at fault, but with some good leaping. Finally he was run to earth and abandoned.
We then went to a cover near Bubbenhall, but found no fox, and then, with the same luck, to another east of Baggington. It was now nearly four o’clock, growing dusk, and beginning to rain. The hounds started for their kennels, and Dick and I took a soft bridle-path skirting the charming road that leads, under such ivy-clad tree-trunks and between such hedges as no other land can show, through Stoneleigh Village and past Stoneleigh Abbey to Leamington, and a well-earned rest.
My memorandum for that day closes: “Horse, £2 12s. 6d.; Fees, 2s.; and well worth the money.”