"Your horse is badly strained, sir," said a jolly-looking landlord; "but you're not far from Northampton." "Northampton!" said Gibbs. "Why, I don't want to go to Northampton; I want to go to Mr. Smith's, at, two miles beyond Weedon." "Weedon? Oh! about eight miles it is. Ah! he won't get there to-night. Better leave him here, sir, and we'll see what we can do for him." "No, thank ye, old fellow; I'll just get him gently home, if I can, for my groom will take care of him. We've had a tremendous thing. I got into a most awful place. No use in stopping to look at the fences; if you can't get over them, must get through themthat's my motto.' Gibbs was getting the steam up again. "Now, then, old fellow, I'll have my horse out; he must go.' And, lighting another cigar, he mounted and turned his head towards the road he had come. "Now, which way?" "Why, when you get about a mile beyond Nobottle, bear away to the left, through some large open fields to Brockhall, and then you're close by Weedon; you can't miss the road." Couldn't he? But he did; for when he got to Nobottle it was five o'clock, and in another half-hour he could scarcely see his hand before him. This was not an enviable situation. He looked on the left, at every gate he passed, to see a road; then he pulled up, thinking he must have passed it; then he cursed his folly in going on after his fall; then he shouted, though, as nobody replied, he became almost afraid of his own voice. At last he discovered the gate, and the road through the fields; and a pretty discovery it was, for he had not proceeded ten yards before his horse put his foot into a ditch by the side, and sent Mr. Gibbs plump into a wet bed of nettles. Up he got, and so did his hunter; but he had had enough of riding for that day, so, taking the bridle in his hand, he started to walk the rest of the way. But his misfortunes were not quite over, for, having got with difficulty out of the fields, and along the road into which they lead, he came to the end of the lane, with a cross-road running at the top of it; there was a fingerpost, but no light to read it; so he was again at his wit's end which way to turn. After wasting five minutes in thinking, and having turned down about a hundred yards to the left, he came to the determination that he was wrong, so away he went again to the right, still leading his halting and jaded animal; for the road, on each side covered with trees, was as dark as it well could be. Ön and on he went; the rain kept pouring down, and, every other step, he was up to his ancles in water. He wondered that no house was in view; he thought of Smith and his dinner-he thought of his new boots and coat-he thought of the park and its pleasures-and, above all, of his new horse, lame and beat; and it almost made him forswear hunting for ever. But then he had boasted so; he had always been such a sportsman; and now that he had money, and was on the road to fortune, for his friends to find out that he was an imposter, and nothing more than a lawyer's clerk with a taste for pea-jackets and cider-cellars, was too much. Oh, Gibbs, Gibbs! there's nobody we like deceiving so much as ourselves. "Here's Weedon, at last!" exclaimed he, as he caught a glimpse of a light or two; and, hurrying on as fast as his horse would let him, he knocked at the first cottage-door he came to. "Whereabouts is the station?-for it's so dark, I can't find my way?" "A matter o' four miles or so: ain't it, Joe?" said the woman to her husband, inside the cottage. "Yes, the railway station at Weedon," said the man, from the midst of a pipe and a cloud of smoke. "What! isn't this Weedon ?" "Weedon! No; to be sure not. You be come all out of the way." "Can't you come in and shut the door?" said the man. "Wait a bit, my good man. Tell me where I am, and where I can get a fly or anything to take me home; for I can't stand this any longer." ve? "Oh," said the man, coming to the door; "you be a hunter, be You can't get a fly nor stable for your horse no nearer than Daventry, and that be a good two miles; but, if you keep quite straight through the village, you can't miss the way." "So they said at some beastly place ten miles off; but I have, you see" "Well, this road be quite straight; there's no turning at all." And the man retired into the cottage, and shut the door. Here was a pretty fix. However, there was nothing to be done for it but to proceed; so away went Gibbs again. This time he was right; and in about an hour more he found himself in the stable-yard of the principal inn in Daventry. A fly was soon ready, his horse was taken in, and a promise of attention given; and away he went, with a cigar and more hot brandy-and-water, for his friend's cottage. Here his absence had caused a great deal more astonishment and inconvenience than anxiety, though the possibility of an accident occasionally crossed the mind of his host. Six o'clock came, and no Gibbs; half-past six and seven, and yet no Gibbs; so they sat down to dinner without him. The dinner was gone, the nuts and port-wine were gone, and coffee had succeeded. Smith was giving his uncle an account of the country they had run over from Nobottle to Harpole, and describing a magnificent kill in the open, after running seven minutes in view: Gibbs, for the time, was out of mind, as he was out of sight, when a fly was heard to stop short at the garden-gate. "Here he is, by Jove!" And, at a quarter to nine, Mr. Gibbs walked into Mr. Smith's parlour. Modesty was a thing which never stood in our hero's way, so he pretended none in accepting an offer of mutton-chops and tea to a most unreasonable amount. He detailed his adventures after his own fashion described timber fences innumerable and brooks without end, which he had surmounted in following the hounds after his fall, and ended by apologising for coming home thus late; but his horse had strained himself, and a blackguard innkeeper had directed him to Daventry instead of to Weedon. He lit another cigar, and found his way (by aid of a lantern and Smith's groom) to bed. Sunday rose brightly and cheerfully-just such a day as a Londoner would enjoy in the country after six days of business and smoke: the sun shone, and a west wind was drying the rain-drops on the window sill, and cleaning the round stones with which the village street was paved. Gibbs tried to rise too, but he could not; not one joint in his whole body seemed to be in its right place: stiffness was too mild a term for what he felt: an utter impracticability of legs and arms bound him to his bed, so there he remained until the evening, when the boots assisted him into his clothes, and he went up to take leave of his friend Smith and his country life. "I'll leave my horse at Daventry for a day or two then, as you say he's not fit to be moved." "No, sir; he's not fit to be moved, nor won't be, for a few days, sir," said the veterinary surgeon, who had come over to see Mr. Smith's friend upon the subject. "Whenever he is, we'll send him up to town by train, sir. His wind seems a little touched." "His wind! Oh, impossible! I only bought him a few days ago." "Well, sir, he isn't broken-winded, exactly; but he will be so, I should fear, sir, before long; he'll do for harness when he gets round again. I wish you good evening, gentlemen." Here was a break-down: his £80 worth broken-winded!--do for harness!-oh, impossible! However, it was no use to say any more about it; so Gibbs went to bed, and the next morning went back to town by the first train. He arrived there sore in every joint, duly impressed with the idea that, though hospitably received, he had not been wanted; and to learn that, while he had been enjoying the pleasures of the chase, his Gretna Greens were gone to worse than nothing, and that he had lost his chance of selling them. The first of December came, and with it the loss of money to many thousands, and the loss of all hope to those who had nothing else to lose. The bubbles had burst. Gibbs had returned to old Hookem's, and his father had just rescued him from a spunginghouse, by advancing all that he ever meant to have left him by will, and making him a beggar for the rest of his life. Amongst other bills with which James Gibbs, Esq., astonished the governor, was the following: It was accompanied by the following note : "DEAR GIBBS,-I enclose you the account which has been sent to me. Jobson assures me that £11 11s. was the outside he could get for your horse, as he was all but broken-winded, and is not quite sound about the feet. "Indigo Cottage. I am yours truly, T. J. D. SMITH." NOTITIA VENATICA. BY R. T. VYNER, ESQ. (Continued.) With regard to the scent, I never yet could meet with any person who could satisfactorily prove to me how it is produced, or in what way the atmosphere affects the increase or diminution of it. Scent is well known to exist in all weathers, and with the air at all temperatures I have seen a most brilliant scent in the hardest black frost at Christmas, and also under the scorching influence of the sun in the months of April and May; I have witnessed a total absence of it in the gloomy and soft mizzling damp of November, in which kind of weather scent is generally observed to prevail; and in the boisterous and drying winds of March I have known hounds to run for an hour, as if they had been tied to a fox. The spring, with the exception of the period when the blustering March winds set in, generally produces better runs than any other part of the year; but I have also known the day to produce a good scent, even during that tempestuous season. I was once riding to cover in a perfect hurricane in March, and calling at the house of a friend to breskfast, observed to him that it would be quite useless to attempt to hunt, as the air was so piercing, and the wind so tremendously strong, that I could with difficulty keep my cap on my head, and consequently there could be no scent; he smiled, and said I was much mistaken, as there was a most burning scent, which he had proved, having had a most capital run just before. The fact was, he had started his gardener, with a quarter of an hour's law, in a circle of about two miles round his park, and had then hunted him with two bloodhounds which he kept. Away they went, in right good style; and the affrighted gardener had only just time to escape into a tree near the house, as "Yelled on the view the opening pack." My friend's conjectures proved perfectly true: notwithstanding the continuance of the storm, we threw off. It was a large deep woodland where we found; but the fox, which was no doubt a traveller, faced the wind in a most determined manner, and we killed him, after fiftyfive minutes' hard running, close to Bromsgrove Lickey. What impressed it more particularly on my mind was, that we had to ride a distance of twenty-five miles home afterwards. The general indications of a good scent are-when the hounds smell strong when they come out in a morning, and when they puke on their road to cover; if the pavement sweats or looks damp; more particularly on the barometer rising than when it is the reverse; when the horses are faint on their road to the cover-side. In a black frost the scent is frequently good; but in a white one, when it is going off, there is seldom any. Frosty mornings, with stormy weather after mid-day, are * "Lady of the Lake." seldom favourable to sport; and if a large black cloud comes suddenly over, the scent generally fails during its influence. One poet tells us that " a southerly wind and a cloudy sky" are necessary for a good day's sport; while another describes one of the best days ever seen in Leicestershire as taking place "with the wind at northeast, forbiddingly keen." Some persons fancy that the wetter a country is, the better the scent will be: this is, to a certain extent, erroneous, as, although moisture in some shape is conducive to it, so, on the other hand, too much wet chills the soil and also the atmosphere, and destroys it. When I hunted Holderness, which is allowed to be one of the deepest and wettest countries in England, I observed that there was always the best scent when the ground merely showed the impression of the ball of the fox's foot: when it was soft enough to allow the leg to penetrate deep into the soil, when it was "deluded with water," as old Will Carter used to observe, the result generally was, that there was little or no scent. Again, in sandy countries, I have frequently observed a burning scent in the spring, when the exhalations were the strongest on hot sunny days. One cause to which the scent failing from the beginning of a run is from the misfortune of running the heelway of the fox's line, which I have often seen done, even up to his very kennel. Such a circumstance as this is more likely to occur in woodlands than otherwise, excepting in the case of hounds coming across the line of a disturbed fox. I met with the following in an old manuscript I was reading the other day :— * "Feb. 25th, 1788.-The Pytchley hounds met at Oslingbury Old. In the course of the morning, as the hounds were going to draw near Ecton, they struck a scent through a hedge, and ran very hard into Billingfield, where they came to a check; when, after some time lost in making a cast, Dick Knight found a kennel in a patch of young furze, and inquired of a shepherd if he had seen the fox, when he said his dog had put him up a short time before, and we found we had been running heel. We then went back, and laid the hounds on the right way; but it was too late, as the scent had died away, therefore we gave it up."† Another reason for hounds not being able to work over some districts, independent of sheep, cattle, &c., is the amazing number of hares which on some estates are preserved to such an extent as to entirely soil the ground. I could enumerate many instances as happening to myself, corroborative of what I have been saying; but the two following accounts of the sport of hounds being thus spoilt will, I should conceive, be a much stronger proof, as occurring to two such great authorities as the celebrated Dick Knight and William Shaw, so long the excellent huntsmen of his Grace the Duke of Rutland: "Monday, Nov. 14th, 1791.-The Pytchley hounds met at Lamport Earths. After having finished their first fox, they drew Scotland Wood, where they found immediately; but, from the abundance of hares getting up before the hounds every instant, and staining the ground, they were completely foiled, and consequently Dick Knight took them away, to find a fox in another cover." + * Some years ago, when Lord Middleton hunted the country known as Sir Tatton Sykes's country, old Will Carter being at this time his lordship's huntsman, the hounds were brought to cover one morning at the usual hour, when Will, to relieve the gentlemen already arrived from the anxiety of waiting, with a low bow thus addressed them :-"My lord's compliments, and he does not intend hunting this morning, as the country is so' deluded' with water." Extract from memoranda in MSS., entitled "Pytchley Chase-book." |