The women folk are as keen as their husbands. They tell of a 'woman body' at Wythburn who, joining the hounds in full cry, and finding her skirts in the way, stopped, took a knife out of her pocket, and slit her petticoat in order that with a 'divided skirt' she might the surer be in at the kill. How keen the men are, is shown by the fact that beginning as youngsters to follow the drag, and carrying on a love of the sport through the prime of manhood, they may be still found from 75 to 80 and over, out with the hounds at the call of the horn. Nay, even when their sight fails them, they will follow, and it is on record that a veteran whose eyes were failing him and who had the rare good luck of a vantage ground to see the finish of the hunt, and was so maddened by the hurried and eager account from his companions of how the hunt was going, that he cried out 'Hang thur aid een o' mine! I wish that they wer nobbut out all togidder; I believe I wad see better through t' hooals!' Fox hunting in the Lake Country tests the sportsman. None but a true lover of the chase would be content to breakfast and get {196} away with the stars (as in winter he oft-times has to do that he may get to the heights before the hounds are loosed)--and, facing all weathers, come back with the stars. He has to battle with storm and tempest. It may be fine in one valley and a roaring blizzard on the other side of the mountain. The old veteran, John Crozier, himself would tell of how he had to lie down on Skiddaw summit in a sudden and blinding snowstorm, and on more than one occasion he and all the hunt have suddenly been enveloped in a thick mist, which made movement almost impossible. And hunting not only tries the heart, it tries the head. A fox gets 'binked,' as they call it, or banked, and some one must go up on an almost inaccessible crag to put in the terrier; and a man must know the country, and the probable run of every fox that gets up in front of the hounds. There is no earth stopping; only the bields are known, and the cunning of Reynard is a secret, to be learnt not only by the huntsman and whip but by every single man in the field. As for the foxes, though the old greyhound breed that John Peel knew--20 lbs. to 29 lbs. in weight--have passed away, the little black-legged Irish fox can give a good account {197} of himself, and from three to five hours and from 25 to 40 miles have not been an uncommon experience of a run. At the beginning of last century it was not an unusual thing for the hounds to be running 'on the tops' through the night, and the legends of the 'whish-hounds,' or 'spirit-packs' of Cornwall and Devon might very well have been reborn in Borrowdale.