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.
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