Sooner or later there is a sudden check, a couple of sharp turns, and the spell is gone.  Hounds may run back ever so well, to the very covert whence an hour ago they forced him.  The pleasure of watching them work out a scent, growing rapidly colder, may indeed be left to us; but the glorious possibilities, which lasted as long as a gallant though invisible “quarry” was leading us straight away from home into unfamiliar regions, have passed away; the record run, which we thought had really commenced at last, far, far into the unknown land, into the country leading to nowhere, is not yet attained,—­probably it never will be, for it existed in the human imagination alone during that thrilling thirty-minutes’ burst, and was beyond the compass of foxes, horses, and hounds.

As a set off to this it must be admitted that fast runs do not take place every day on these hills.  Perhaps there will not be more than half a dozen “clinkers” in a season with a “two-day-a-week” pack.  For this reason, as regards all-round sport, the wall country cannot compare with a vale:  a stranger might hunt there for three weeks in March, and at the end of that time take himself off in disappointment and disgust, declaring these fast-flying runs he had heard so much about to be an invention and a myth, and the wall country only fit for fools and funkers.  For good scenting days in this hill country are few and far between, and a bad day in the wall district is the poorest fun imaginable.  For this the field have generally themselves to thank, since they will not give the hounds a chance.

But there is a burning scent this morning, as there generally is when the dew is just going off.  For twenty-five minutes hounds do not check once.  The earth our fox has been making for is fortunately closed.  This causes a moment’s uncertainty among the hounds, but not a check, for they drive straight onwards, and it is evident that he is making for some earths five miles away in a neighbouring hunt’s territory, which instinct tells him will be open.

There they go, old T.K. and J.A., and several ladies, past masters in the craft of crossing a country with the maximum of elegance and skill and the minimum of risk to their horses, themselves, or their friends.  Though the hounds are travelling at their greatest possible pace, they ride alongside them, looking as cool as cucumbers (too cool, I think, for their own enjoyment; for the more excitable though less experienced rider probably enjoys himself more).  Note how each wall, varying in height from three to four and a half feet, is taken at a steady pace by those well-schooled horses; even a five-foot wall, coped with sharp, jagged stones pointing straight upwards, does not turn them one hair’s breadth from the line.  And please note also that each has two hands on the reins, and no whip hand flung high in the air, or elbows thrust outwards, you gentlemen who are fond of painting pictures of hunting scenes for the press!