Sometimes during the summer months Boulter is to be seen struggling with a pile of luggage at a foreign railway station, looking as miserable as a man can look, and heavily handicapped as to the language of the country in which his wife has elected to travel. But the trip never lasts long. Some business connected with the hunt invariably calls him back, and on a hot August day you will find him at the kennels chatting with Tom Wilding over the prospects of the coming season or the young entry, and anxiously longing for the "beastly harvest" to be over, and for November leaves to fall.
If not there he will be riding round looking up Velveteens and his satellites, and endeavouring to imbue them with the motto of "Live and let live," as applicable to the fox.
THE FARMER.
"Like master like man" is a very old saying, and, like many of those ancient saws, very true. Therefore, in such a sporting country as the Bullshire, with such a sporting Master at the head of affairs, it stands to reason that the field, or at all events the majority of them, should be equally imbued with the love of the chase. Now in every country the mainstay and backbone of the hunt is the Farmer, for without his consent and co-operation fox-hunting would become a thing of the past, and instead of a series of brilliant gallops and a successful season, we should read of a series of actions for trespass and verdicts for damages, carrying costs.
Keen sportsmen and true friends to the hunt are the Farmers of Bullshire, so there is little fear of opposition on their part. Indeed, on one occasion they combined to make it very "warm" for a stranger who came among them, and who did not fall in with their views concerning the necessary amount of support to be given to the hounds. The erring member was a man who, having made some money in the chandler line in London, took it into his head that he was cut out for a Farmer, and accordingly took a farm in the centre of the hunt. From the moment he set his foot in the place he gave offence, for the first thing he did was to wire the whole of his fences, and then gave notice that anyone riding across his land would be summoned for trespass and "prosecuted according to law." "He was not a-going to 'ave them beastly dorgs and 'osses a-running over his land, not if he knowed it." A climax, however, was reached when the surly brute assaulted one of the members of the hunt with a pitchfork, and swore he would lay down poison for the hounds. A meeting was there and then called to discuss the question, and it was unanimously decided to give the individual "what for."