It was easy by two o'clock to tell the men who rode horses from those who only "talked horse."
The "customers" were all looking grim and silent; the men of the road were brightly conversational, and sat in groups discussing their cigars and whisky flasks at every point from which they could not possibly see, should the hounds slip quietly and suddenly away.
The little group near the corner of the covert had grown weary of waiting. The glow which follows a sharp trot to covert on your favourite hack, and the consumption of "just one glass" of orange brandy, had worn off, and the damp chill of a November afternoon had begun to pierce through the stoutest of pinks and to chill the gayest of hearts.
The horses had fretted themselves into a white lather with impatience, or stood with drooping heads and staring coats, mute witnesses to the chill which had come with afternoon and hope deferred. Everything suggested that fox-hunting was an overrated amusement.
Little by little the hounds had drawn away from the Hall and its overstocked coverts, until now, at 2 P.M., they were thrown into a small outlying wood, where pheasants were never reared and rarely shot.
At last there was a doubtful whimper; then a hard-looking man in mufti (a local horse dealer) stood up in his stirrups and held his hat high above his head. A dozen keen pair of eyes saw the signal, and though no foolish halloa imperilled their chance of a run, the light and colour came back into the men's faces, and they forgot in a moment the miseries of the morning as they marked the lithe red form of reynard steal out of covert, and with a whisk of his grey-tagged brush, make off leisurely, with his head set straight for the stiffest line in the county.
By this time the first doubtful whimper had been caught up and repeated in fuller and more certain tones, and there was little need of the horn to call loiterers from covert.
One after another the beauties tumbled out in hot haste, hackles up. For one moment each seemed to dwell as he cleared the brakes, and then with a rush they gathered to where old Monitor had the line under the lee of a grey stone wall, along which the whole pack glanced, swift and close packed as wild fowl on the wing, while the keen November air thrilled with the maddest, merriest music that ever made a sportsman's blood tingle in his veins.