nting disappointment, should ever go out again.
On such occasions the huntsman is declared among private friends to
be of no use whatever. The master is an absolute muff. All honour as
to preserving has been banished from the country. The gamekeepers
destroy the foxes. The owners of coverts encourage them. "Things have
come to such a pass," says Walker to Watson, "that I mean to give it
up. There's no good keeping horses for this sort of thing." All this
is very sad, and the only consolation comes from the evident delight
of those who take pleasure in trotting about without having to incur
the labour and peril of riding to hounds.

At two o'clock on this day the ladies went home, having been driven
about as long as the coachmen had thought it good for their horses.
The men of course went on, knowing that they could not in honour
liberate themselves from the toil of the day till the last covert
shall have been drawn at half-past three o'clock. It is certainly
true as to hunting that there are so many hours in which the spirit
is vexed by a sense of failure, that the joy when it does come should
be very great to compensate the evils endured. It is not simply that
foxes will not dwell in every spinney, or break as soon as found,
or always run when they do break. These are the minor pangs. But
when the fox is found, and will break, and does run, when the scent
suffices, and the hounds do their duty, when the best country which
the Shires afford is open to you, when your best horse is under you,
when your nerves are even somewhat above the usual mark,--even then
there is so much of failure! You are on the wrong side of the wood,
and getting a bad start are never with them for a yard; or your
horse, good as he is, won't have that bit of water; or you lose your
stirrup-leather, or your way; or you don't see the hounds turn, and
you go astray with others as blind as yourself; or, perhaps, when
there comes the run of the season, on that very day you have taken a
liberty with your chosen employment, and have lain in bed. Look back
upon your hunting lives, brother sportsmen, and think how few and how
far between the perfect days have been.

In spite of all that was gone this was one of those perfect days to
those who had the pleasure afterwards of remembering it. "Taking it
all in all, I think that Lord Llwddythlw had the best of it from
first to last," said Vivian, when they were again talking of it in
the drawing-room after th