where it is narrow and quite negotiable from grass to grass, even for a heavy man well mounted. The huntsman gave me precedence, but my horse made a sudden stop six feet from the edge of the bank, and after a second failure I invited my companion to give me a lead, which he promptly essayed to do, with results precisely the same. Happily for us, there was a check, and we got to the hounds after a short deviation from their track. Next day I went in my "constitutional' walk to survey the scene, and I found that the bank from which the horses declined to leap was so worn underneath by the action of the stream that it could not have sustained the weight of a man on horseback.

"

Never press hounds when the scent is uncertain, although when it is good they will press you, and don't get in the huntsman's way; rather let him perceive— and he will perceive quickly-your appreciation of his difficult work and your anxious desire to help it. This you may do sometimes by getting forward to the end of a covert, and viewing the egress of the fox, by turning hounds when the whips are away, and in other minor matters. I have never forgotten a compliment paid to me by the huntsman of a pack with which I had not hunted before, and which was repeated to me by a friend to whom it was spoken: "I don't know who that gentleman is, but he's a sportsman." There had been nothing of special interest in our proceedings-a slow hunting run with occasional spurts—but Jack Morgan had seen enough to convince him that I loved the sport too well to spoil it.

Spare your horse as much as you can and be always on the look-out for good galloping ground. I have seen men toiling in ploughed clay when there has been a footpath close by through the field, and sometimes by jumping a low fence or opening a gate you may pass from the same heavy arable soil to the springy pasture turf. "A merciful man is merciful to his beast,' but the hunting man is more than this-he loves and honours the brave, wise, patient friend who has given him so much happy, healthful enjoyment. If he halts to refresh himself, after a hard day, on his long homeward route, he does not forget that oats make meal as well as whiskey. He goes to say "Good-night " to his horse before he retires to rest. Invariably on hunting days the butler came into our dining-room at eight p.m. (we dined early in those days-about six) and announced that "Smith is in the stables," and thither we went, père et fils, where the light from the great lanthorns shone on the clean white straw, twisted at the end when it reached the pavement. The long

thorn had been extracted, the overreach had been soothed with healing ointment, and the hunters, a little tired and not a little hungry, had been comfortably "suppered up."

To ride after a "drag" with a "scratch pack of miscellaneous mongrels following a menial who trails a dead rabbit steeped in aniseed in lieu of the natural scent of the living fox is denounced by hunting men as a vile caricature and degradation, and I have seen an enthusiastic lover of the chase in furious

excitement when he heard a cynical philosopher, totally bereft of all sporting instincts, and who had never mounted a horse, declare that he saw no difference in the comparative merits of two such silly amusements or two such abominable stinks. Nevertheless, there are times and places when the meets are few or far when, faute de mieux, the drag has strong attractions in the prospect of a fast gallop over perilous obstacles for impetuous youth.

In the United States, where there are no coverts for foxes and the noble animal is a most expensive luxury, the drag supplies to the man of business, who leaves the city for his country club," an excitement and exercise which refreshes his mind and promotes his health.

In both these cases the drag has this advantagethat is not associated with any apprehensions of that blank day or total absence of scent which so often here in England depresses the spirits and embitters the existence of so many gallant men. The subject is not suggestive of romance, but in my time there was a legend at Oxford connected with the Christ Church drag so dramatic in its incidents and issues that I sent some record of it forty years ago to a popular periodical, accompanied by a most admirable illustration expressly drawn for me by my friend John Leech, and herewith reprinted.*

* By the kind permission of Messrs. Bradbury, Agnew & Co., the proprietors of Once a Week.