the right side of the stream. With a twang on his horn Tucker gets the pack on to the line, and away they go up the steep hillside. By the time we reach the top they are a quarter of a mile ahead, and now we must harden our hearts and gallop along over the blind slippery heather, or we shall never catch them. Catch them? We shall not see them again if we hesitate, for they are flying as if with wings, on a scent which is evidently burning, in spite of the fact that it must now be half-an-hour old. It's a queer thing to do, at first, this headlong galloping over very rough ground; and it is not until one realises how surefooted the local horses are that one can feel really at home. My favourite horse for the moor is by a thoroughbred out of a 14.2 Exmoor pony, and he has the pace of his sire combined with the cat-like cleverness of his dam. On Cheriton Ridge there is a check, and hounds are held up for five minutes, to let the horses get their wind, and to give the many folk who were slow in crossing Badgeworthy Water a chance of catching us up. Those who had waited with the pack could not of course be certain which way the stag had gone, and a false rumour that he had made as if for Mill Hill led many astray. If you forgo the tufting and wait on the pack, it is a golden rule to ride on their very tails (or as close as the Master will let you) till they have picked up the line. There is always some idiot about who thinks he knows, but knows not, which way they will go. To the fox-hunter it appears at first as if an intolerable amount of liberty were taken with the scent. The delay in sending for the pack is alone enough to make the Quornite tear his hair, and then deliberately to stop hounds in the middle of a run! But the tufting cannot be done save with a few hounds, and the pack cannot be unkennelled till the right animal has been separated from the herd. Then again, the scent of the red deer is very strong and enduring; and if the run lasts for several hours, as often happens, even in August, the horses have to be considered, and more is gained than is lost, as a rule, by a brief halt. In a very few minutes we are galloping again-now up a stony hillside, now for a little way along a bridle-path, and again through the kneedeep heather. The bare hillsides are the most dangerous places, so many are the bad patches and so treacherous the loose stones. There is one particular spot on the flank of Dunkery, called the Graveyard, which is never crossed without grief if hounds are running fast; but somehow or other no one ever seems to injure himself very seriously on the moor: a broken leg, two years ago, is the worst I can think of, and this belonged to a poor lady who had a spill in the Graveyard. We are gradually turning to the left, running farther and farther away from the sea, which from the top of the horses are more blown than Ridge we could see sparkling in the far distance, twelve hundred feet beneath us. We pass Pinkery pond and encounter some terribly boggy ground, which makes us string out into a long procession, for no one likes to plunge into a quagmire. Over the Simonsbath road and Shouls barrow Common and we are on the edge of the moor, with all the midlands of Devon below us, and Dartmoor showing up like a long blue cloud in the very far distance. We are a fairly select company now; strung out over the moor for miles is the gallant throng which gathered at the Meet; perhaps twenty people are really on terms with hounds, which still appear to be running as if they would never stop. But a shepherd calls out that the stag is only just in front of them, and in five minutes more we view him as he crosses Fullaford Down. He is evidently making for the river Bray, and will take soil in those cool waters. The end must be near at hand now. But there is a check; Tucker makes a cast, which does not mend matters, tries a little wood near a farmhouse,-ah, that is better: something brown flashes among the trees at the far end, and away go the pack with more music than before (staghounds make little noise on a breast - high scent) in full pursuit. But Tucker shouts and blows his horn and is trying to stop them; the whips are frantically trying to get round them, but their are the big hounds, and they can do little. What has happened? Our friend One-horn himself supplies the answer as he leaves the wood in another direction and makes off at that leisurely tireless lope of his for the river and safety. He has routed out a galloping threeyear-old, and the hounds are on the wrong line. Half an hour went by before the mistake could be put right, and no more did we see of One-horn that day. Probably he ran the river for miles, but whether upstream or downstream could not be satisfactorily made out. I believe Tucker stuck to his task till evening, and eventually found a very stale line away down by Higher Molland, but could make nothing of it. The run was over when One - horn prodded up a substitute; and the gallant beast lived to fight another day. We had ridden a ten-mile point; it was three o'clock, and we were fifteen miles from Exford and the nags' stables, so we pursued our way for Simonsbath and tea. Sometimes the hunted stag swims out to sea, and is pursued and captured by a boat. He always makes for water if he can, knowing that he will have hounds at a disadvantage where he can stand but they must swim. The manner of his death is usually in this wise. When he is at bay (has "taken soil") in the water, a lasso is thrown over his horns, half a dozen men tail on to the rope and drag him over, when the huntsman dashes in and cuts his throat: in the hindhunting the hind's head is held under water and she is drowned. A fine, if savage, spectacle, is a big moorland stag at bay. I think he is too blown and too angry to feel afraid; certainly there is nothing but "pride in his port, defiance in his eye," and he dies a good death, he dies fighting, having lived the free and open life of a privileged marauder. If the red deer were not hunted they would very soon become extinct; for they do a deal of damage at times, but the farmers spare the beasts for the sake of the sport in which, to a man, they take the greatest pride and delight. A stag is a destructive creature. When we had been in our new home about a year I planted a naked hillside with young oak and larch. The woodmen finished their job, and left the young planting surrounded by a wire-netting four feet high. A stag jumped over this in the night, pulled up about two hundred of the young trees, and ate the tops off most of the rest! Seven feet of netting will stop them, but nothing less: it is said that a good hind can clear an obstacle ten feet high. They carry wonderful heads, these west-country stags. The warm winter and the good feeding produce an enormous growth. Otherwise, there is no appreciable difference between them and their cousins of Scotland. Stags from the West have at times been sent to Scotch forests, but have, I believe, produced no notable increase of head in their progeny; from which it appears probable that the offspring of Scotch stag on Exmoor would carry heads of the same average size as the rest of the young generation. No doubt climate and food affect the growth of the bony structures. Then there is the winter hind - hunting, for the herds must be thinned relentlessly, lest they increase beyond all bounds. On the moor, I believe, they often carry this out with a system of relays of hounds, stationed at suitable spots, whereby the tufters can be reinforced without loss of time and energy. The whole pack is not always laid on in a body, as the danger of scattering is very great, so numerous are the hinds in certain quarters. With Sir John Amory's hounds, which hunt pretty well all the north of Devon between Dulverton and Okehampton, the procedure more often follows the lines of orthodox harbouring, tufting, and kennelling. The worst of deer-hunting off the moor is that the pace is frequently too great for the cramped and occasionally unrideable country, and then you have to pound along a road for miles, in the hopes of eventually cutting in again. But sometimes you may get a splendid gallop across wild country, with a good deal of jumping and great pace-the latter you always get, anyhow,-at the end of which you will be twenty miles away from where you met in the morning. The long-legged rose to my chest, and then I hinds think nothing of a fifteenmile point, and it is a severe game alike for men, horses, and hounds. Sir John keeps a pack of harriers, too-real harriers, not dwarf foxhounds, of the old white- and fawn-coloured breed. I have never seen hare hounds to touch them for keenness and nose, and their pace is quite sufficient for the country. There are trout and salmon in the river Exe, though the Exe salmon is apt to be a sulky brute in the upper waters, and only takes a fly under a deal of compulsion. My first Exe fish gave me quite an exciting time. He took a small Jock Scott under a steep bank, crowned by a thick hedge over which I had been casting. After playing him for ten minutes or so I began to wonder how I was going to land him, as I was alone, and could not conceivably gaff him down under the hedge and bank. It seemed best to slide inelegantly into the water, which was waistdeep and very cold. But once there, things were no better, for even unhampered by a fifteen-foot rod, a line, and a salmon at the end of it, I do not think I could have got back up the bank again. The other side of the river showed a bland and alluring aspect, and a delicately sloping meadowbank. I looked at it longingly; played the fish till he was half dead with exhaustion and I with cold, and at last in desperation began to walk across the river. The water was in mid-stream and swimming about with the salmon. A few strokes with one hand (I clutched on to the rod with the other) and my feet touched bottom again, but the stream was strong and I was taken some little distance down before I contrived to get ashore. I had swallowed a lot of rather dirty water, but the salmon was still on, and five minutes later I gaffed him-a nice 15-lb. fish. I have killed other salmon, but never one that gave me quite such an exciting time. There is lots of fun to be had in this country still, if you only know how to get it. Shooting? Oh yes, there is any amount of tame pheasant shooting, and they are almost all high birds. But every year I feel less and less excited, as invitations to shoot my friends' coverts come in, and if only I had the moral courage I would answer that I should be delighted to come and spend the day in the open air with my host and his friends, watching them shoot, and making myself useful, but that it is no pleasure to me to kill a pheasant; that it makes me uncomfortable if, a8 often happens, I miss an easy shot; and that I am positively wretched if the bird goes away wounded. I often wonder if there are not many men who secretly agree with me-that is, who shoot merely for the sake of seeing their neighbours or of taking their wives to a pleasant house-party. do not think it will do any one any particular harm if one I of the results of the Budget is a lessened output of hand-reared pheasants. But I have one corner of bog and moorland which gives me the greatest joy, for there you may kill half-a-dozen snipe of an October afternoon, with perhaps a brace of partridges and a few rabbits. Once I saw an old grey-hen; there are many blackcock upon Exmoor. It is a "lucky" spot for a woodcock too, and I once came back from a solitary afternoon walk with three woodcock, four snipe, a green plover, an old cockpheasant, and a landrail. A happy day indeed, to be marked with a red cross. In truth, seekers after peace, we have entered into the haven where we would be. It is not, I trust, a peace so profound as to be selfish: we take the deepest interest in all our neighbours, and to do them justice, when we first arrived, they took quite an equal interest in us. On the Bench, in the hunting-field, in our local politics, wherever one may forgather with his kind, one meets a kindly race of men, who take their duties seriously, their pleasures gladly, and their sorrows soberly. They are content to live quietly on their own acres, looking after their henchmen and their land, giving their best labour in the many unpaid posts upon which the wellbeing of an English county depends. Is there any form of society in any part of the world which produces more worthy men and sweeter women than our country life-men who can lead worthily, women wellbeloved by those for whom they work, healing and assuaging ? By heavens! the squires of England are still fit for the great trust they have in keeping; and so long as this be so, not all the venom of the Socialist spawn shall avail anything against them, and against the love which the people bear them. |