a fishmonger; the lot of horse-dealers; and, above
all, those _blase_ gentlemen who, bored with everything, openly express
their preference for a carted deer or red-herring drag, if a straight
running fox is not found in a quarter of an hour after the hounds are
thrown into cover. The men who ride on the Lincolnshire Wolds are all
sportsmen, who know the whole country as well as their own gardens, and
are not unfrequently personally acquainted with the peculiar appearance
and habits of each fox on foot. Altogether they are as formidable
critics as any professional huntsman would care to encounter.

There is another pleasant thing. In consequence, perhaps, of the rarity,
strangers are not snubbed as in some counties; and you have no
difficulty in getting information to any extent on subjects agricultural
and fox-hunting (even without that excellent passport which I enjoyed of
a hunter from the stables of the noble Master of the Hounds), and may be
pretty sure of more than one hospitable and really-meant invitation in
the course of the return ride when the sport is ended.

But time is up, and away we trot--leaving the woods of Limber for the
present--to one of the regular Wolds, artificial coverts, a square of
gorse of several acres, surrounded by a turf bank and ditch, and outside
again by fields of the ancient turf of the moorlands. In go the hounds
at a word, without a straggler; and while they make the gorse alive with
their lashing sterns, there is no fear of our being left behind for want
of seeing which way they go, for there is neither plantation nor hedge,
nor hill of any account to screen us. And there is no fear either of the
fox being stupidly headed, for the field all know their business, and
are fully agreed, as old friends should be, on the probable line.

A very faint Tally-away, and cap held up, by a fresh complexioned,
iron-gray, bullet-headed old gentleman, of sixteen stone, mounted on a
four-year-old, brought the pack out in a minute from the far end of the
covert, and we were soon going, holding hard, over a newly-ploughed
field, looking out sharp for the next open gate; but it is at the wrong
corner, and by the time we have reached the middle of fifty acres, a
young farmer in scarlet, sitting upright as a dart, showed the way over
a new rail in the middle of a six-foot quickset. Our nag,
"Leicestershire," needs no spurring, but takes it pleasantly, with a
hop, skip, and jump; and by the time we had