This knack is a sort of instinct rather than an acquirement, an intuitive sagacity, akin to that faculty by which the Red Indian, in common with other savages, takes the right direction through the pathless woods, and over the monotonous prairies of the West. We will suppose a man to be riding his own line, fairly with a pack of fox-hounds, in a country he has never seen before, with a good scent, and a fox’s head set up-wind. He jumps into a field from which there are but two possible egresses, a quarter of a mile apart, the one to the right, the other to the left; he goes unhesitatingly to the former, and the hounds bend towards him almost as soon as he is clear of the obstacle which has obliged him to diverge from his line. He could not, probably, explain why he thus acted; yet he _did_ it, and he was right. All through a run you will see some men gaining every turn upon the hounds, just as others lose them. This happy facility is but a modification of that which makes the difference between a bad huntsman and a good one. The latter seems to possess an intuitive knowledge of the run of a fox, independent of all extraneous accidents, such as wind, sheep, dogs, people ready to head him at every turn, and the thousand obstacles that are always present to destroy the chance of a good run—nay, even of country, for such men exhibit it in districts with which they have no acquaintance. I begin to think people are _born_ sportsmen, just as they are born poets, painters, and peers of the realm. We see them in every class of life; and there is many an honest fellow who loses half a day’s work, and wears out his shoe-leather, to make the best he can of his fox-hunting on foot, who, in a higher position, would have achieved a brilliant reputation in the eyes of the sporting world.
What leads me to this reflection is the glimpse I had of Miss Lushington, at the window of her sanctuary commanding the stableyard, pouring out a wineglassful of a fluid that _looked_ like water, but _smelt_ like gin, and handing the same to one of the most dilapidated individuals it has ever been my fortune to encounter.
As I entered the back-door of the “Haycock,” he touched an extremely damaged hunting-cap, and greeted me with much cordiality. I then recognised a character with whom I could not fail to have made acquaintance, even during my short stay in the Soakington country, and whom I never heard called by any other name than “Old Ike, the Earth-stopper.” As an example of what I have above alluded to—the creature in whom the sporting instinct seems fully developed, the man who must obviously have been intended by Nature for a sportsman—Old Ike deserves to have his portrait taken, more especially as the office he fills so well is the only one in which he could have found his appropriate place in the world.