Having come to look on and learn, I had probably seen and heard all that day had in store for me,--surely enough for one's first day at fox-hunting. When I had ridden for a few minutes I saw, far across the fields, that the hounds had turned to the left and were making for my road. Pressing forward, I came up in time to see them cross to the front, and go scurrying away over the grass, nosing out the scent as they ran. There had been a check, and "the field" was well up. The road was lower than the fields, and was bordered by a ditch at each side. From this the ground rose a little, and on each bank stood a three-and-a-half-foot thorn hedge. Neither leap was difficult, but the one out of the road was not easy. Here I sat and saw fully a hundred horsemen, dressed in the gay colors of the hunting-field and mounted as men rarely are mounted out of England, all, horses as well as men, eager and excited in the chase, flying over hedge and ditch into the carriage-way and over ditch and hedge into the higher field, beyond and away, headlong after the hounds, every man for himself, and every man for the front, and on they went over another hedge, and out of sight. In the thick of the flight were two ladies, riding as well and as boldly as the men, and two men were brushing their hats in the road, their empty saddles keeping well up with the run. More than satisfied with this climax of my first day's experience, I trotted out for home. The result of the run I never heard, and I leave its description where I lost sight of it. A mile farther on I did see a fagged-looking fox making his rapid way across my road again, and sneaking off under the hedge toward a thicket, and I halted to listen to what sounded like the horn of a huntsman at check over the hill to the left; but possibly the conclusion I drew was not a correct one. I wish that words could give an idea of the life and action of the headlong flight I had just seen; but the inadequacy of all I had read to convey it to me makes it seem useless to try. Photography and description may, in a measure, supply the place of travel; but he who would realize the most thrilling intensity of eager horsemanship must stand in a hedge-bound English lane, and see with his own eyes, and for the first time in his life, a hundred gayly dressed and splendidly mounted fox-hunters flashing at full speed across his path; and it is worth the while to see. Rain never fell on a more lovely country than that part of Warwickshire through which my wet way lay. For ten miles of the seventeen it rained, gently as it rains with us in April; nor is our grass more green in April than this was in Christmas week. The all-prevailing ivy was filled with berries, and the laurustinus was already in bloom.