And soon the whole valley re-echoes with hound music, as the pack come crashing towards us through the thick underwood.  We get a splendid view of the proceedings—­for the covert is a long, narrow strip of about ten acres, running in the shape of a bow round the hill immediately above the place where we are stationed.  There is another small wood of about the same size on the other side of the little valley.  For this our fox makes, the hounds dashing close after him through the brook.  Round and round they go, and it is evident that this cub (unlike several of his brethren who have taken their departure, viewed by the whole field, but not holloaed at) does not intend to face the open country.  Scent is good in covert, perhaps because there are at present few of those dry leaves on the ground that spoil scent after the “fall of the leaf”; the result is, we kill a cub.  This will be a lesson to the rest of the family when they return to-night and discover the fearful end that befalls foxes that “hang in covert.”  Another cub having gone to ground in a rabbit-hole, the keeper is given injunctions to have this hole, together with any other large ones he can find, stopped up, after allowing a day or two to pass, especially making sure, by the use of terriers and also by the tracks, that he does not stop any cubs in.

We now leave the home coverts and start away for a withybed about a mile up the river, where we are told there is a litter.  Here, however, we do not find, though it is the likeliest place in the world for a fox.  As the hounds dash into the withybed a whole string of wild ducks get up, circle round us, and then fly straight away up stream in the shape of the letter V—­a sight unsurpassed if you happen to be a lover of nature.

Our next draw is an isolated artificial gorse of about six acres.  If we find here, we must have a gallop, for there is no covert of any size within a four-mile radius; a fine open country lies all around; walls to jump and large fields of fifty acres apiece to gallop over.  There is some light plough, but each year the plough gets scarcer, for the Cotswolds are rapidly being allowed to tumble back into grass or, rather, into weeds.

A great proportion of the stone-wall country hereabouts consists of downs divided into large enclosures; when the walls are low there is no reason why the pace should not be almost as good as it is in an unenclosed country.  Happily to-day we seem to be in for a quick thing, for before the whip has had time to get to the end of the covert, hounds are away, without a sound, and we start off fully two hundred yards behind them.

The old fox, for a fiver!  But there is no stopping them; so, knowing the country and the earth he is making for, you make tracks, as hard as your horse can pelt, in the direction in which the hounds are going, and very soon they turn to you, and you find yourself almost alongside of them.  They are running “mute,” with their noses several inches off the ground; it almost looks as if they had “got a view” of him.  But this is not the case.  Scent is “breast high.”  Two old hounds that you know well—­Crusty and Governor—­are leading, though you are glad that one or two you do not know (evidently some of this year’s entry) are not far behind.