A score of hard riders, nineteen of whom are jealous, and the twentieth determined not to be beat, forced on by a hundred comrades all eager for the view and its stentorian proclamation, may well save the life of any fox on earth, with scarce an effort from the animal itself. But that hounds are creatures of habit, and huntsmen in the flying countries miracles of patience, no less than their masters, not a nose would be nailed on the kennel-door, after cub-hunting was over, from one end of the shires to the other.
Nothing surprises me so much as to see a pack of hounds, like the Belvoir or the Quorn, come up through a crowd of horses and stick to the line of their fox, or fling gallantly forward to recover it, without a thought of personal danger or the slightest misgiving that not one man in ten is master of the two pair of hoofs beneath him, carrying death in every shoe. Were they not bred for the make-and-shape that gives them speed no less than for fineness of nose, but especially for that dash which, like all victorious qualities, leaves something to chance, they could never get a field from the covert. It does happen, however, that, now and again, a favourable stroke of fortune puts a couple of furlongs between the hounds and their pursuers. A hundred-acre field of well saturated grass lies before them, down go their noses, out go their sterns, and away they scour, at a pace which makes a precious example of young Rapid on a first-class steeple-chase horse with the wrong bridle in its mouth.
But how differently is the same sport being carried out in his father’s country, perhaps by the old gentleman’s own pack, with which the young one considers it slow to hunt.
Let us begin at the beginning and try to imagine a good day in the provinces, about the third week in November, when leaves are thin and threadbare on the fences, while copse and woodland glisten under subdued shafts of sunlight in sheets of yellow gold.
What says Mr. Warburton, favoured of Diana and the Muses?
“The dew-drop is clinging
To whin-bush and brake,
The sky-lark is singing,
Merry hunters, awake!
Home to the cover,
Deserted by night,
The little red rover
Is bending his flight—”
Could words more stirringly describe the hope and promise, the joy, the vitality, the buoyant exhilaration of a hunting morning?
So the little red rover, who has travelled half-a-dozen miles for his supper, returns to find he has “forgotten his latch-key,” and curls himself up in some dry, warm nook amongst the brushwood, at the quietest corner of a deep, precipitous ravine.
Here, while sleep favours digestion, he makes himself very comfortable, and dreams, no doubt, of his own pleasures and successes in pursuit of prey. Presently, about half-past eleven, he wakes with a start, leaps out of bed, shakes his fur, and stands to listen, a perfect picture, with one pad raised and his cunning head aslant. Yes, he recognized it from the first. The “Yooi, wind him, and rouse him!” of old Matthew’s mellow tones, not unknown in a gin-and-water chorus when occasion warrants the convivial brew, yet clear, healthy, and resonant as the very roar of Challenger, who has just proclaimed his consciousness of the drag, some five hours old.
’Tis an experienced rover, and does not hesitate for an instant. Stealing down the ravine, he twists his agile little body through a tangled growth of blackthorn and brambles, crosses the stream dry-footed with a leap, and, creeping through the fence that bounds his stronghold, peers into the meadow beyond. No smart and busy whip has “clapped forward” to view and head him. Matthew, indeed, brings out but one, and swears he could do better without him. So the rover puts his sharp nose straight for the solitude he loves, and whisking his brush defiantly, resolves to make his point.