It is a splendid burst, and the pace is terrible.  The farmers’ powerful horses find it heavy going across the fresh ploughed furrows and the wet ‘squishey’ meadows, where the double mounds cannot be shirked.  Now a lull, and the two old hands, a little at fault, make for the rising ground, where are some ricks, and a threshing machine at work, thinking from thence to see over the tall hedgerows.  Upon the rick the labourers have stopped work, and are eagerly watching the chase, for from that height they can see the whole field.  Yonder the main body have found a succession of fields with the gates all open:  some carting is in progress, and the gates have been left open for the carter’s convenience.  A hundred horsemen and eight or ten ladies are galloping in an extended line along this route, riding hardest, as often happens, when the hounds are quiet, that they may be ready when the chiding commences.

Suddenly the labourers exclaim and point, the hounds open, and the farmers, knowing from the direction they point where to ride, are off.  But this time the fox has doubled, so that the squadrons hitherto behind are now closest up, and the farmers in the rear:  thus the fortune of war changes, and the race is not to the swift.  The labourers on the rick, which stands on the side of a hill, are fully as excited as the riders, and they can see what the hunter himself rarely views, i.e. the fox slipping ahead before the hounds.  Then they turn to alternately laugh at, and shout directions to a disconsolate gentleman, who, ignorant of the district, is pounded in a small meadow.  He is riding frantically round and round, afraid to risk the broad brook which encircles it, because of the treacherous bank, and maddened by the receding sound of the chase.  A boy gets off the rick and runs to earn sixpence by showing a way out.  So from the rick Hodge has his share of the sport, and at that elevation can see over a wide stretch of what he—­changing the ‘d’ into a ’j’—­calls ’the juke’s country.’

It is a famous land.  There are spaces, which on the map look large, and yet have no distinctive character, no individuality as it were.  Such broad expanses of plain and vale are usefully employed in the production of cattle and corn.  Villages, hamlets, even towns are dotted about them, but a list of such places would not contain a single name that would catch the eye.  Though occupying so many square miles, the district, so far as the world is concerned, is non-existent.  It is socially a blank.  But ’the juke’s country’ is a well-known land.  There are names connected with it which are familiar not only in England, but all the world over, where men—­and where do they not?—­converse of sport.  Something beyond mere utility, beyond ploughing and sowing, has given it within its bounds a species of separate nationality.  The personal influence of an acknowledged leader has organised society and impressed it with a quiet enthusiasm.  Even the bitterest Radical forgives the patrician who shoots or rides exceptionally well, and hunting is a pursuit which brings the peer and the commoner side by side.