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126 coursed until darkness overtook us. It sometimes happened, if the day was wild and stormy, that we had not quite run through our stakes; but more often we finished with the supplementary matches I have referred to above, and under any circumstances there was plenty of sport. If the weather had been frosty the hares had the best of it; if it had been wet, the dogs had less difficulty in accounting for their game; but kills were always few in proportion to the number of courses decided, and once I remember that one solitary hare represented the whole bag. On that occasion there was a little wet snow on the ground, which was partially frozen underneath, and puss skimmed over it quite at her ease, while the greyhounds floundered and slipped about and were altogether outpaced.

As soon as the farmhouse was reached dry shoes and socks were requisitioned, and then came the dinner, sometimes held in the barn, sometimes in the kitchen, according to our numbers, and presided over by our neighbour the landlord, with the tenant of the farm in the vice-chair. This dinner, on account of our long drive home, was held at five o'clock, but it was generally ten before we began the homeward journey; and meantime the dinner, and the songs and speeches which followed, were in the highest degree