It is so certainly in hunting, and a big wood too frequently afflicts the sportsman, as the mud does the miner.

The small gorse cover is the happy, much-envied bit of ground in which the gold is sure to show itself readily.

But without the woods the gorse would not hold the foxes, and without the mud the gold would not have found its resting-place.
But, as I have said, Edgehill was a popular meet, and, as regarded the meet itself, was eminently picturesque.

On the present occasion the little field was full of horsemen, moving about slowly, chatting together, smoking cigars, getting off from their hacks and mounting their hunters, giving orders to their servants, and preparing for the day.

There were old country gentlemen there, greeting each other from far sides of the county; sporting farmers who love to find themselves alongside their landlords, and to feel that the pleasures of the country are common to both; men down from town, like our friends of the Roebury club, who made hunting their chosen pleasure, and who formed, in number, perhaps the largest portion of the field; officers from garrisons round about; a cloud of servants, and a few nondescript stragglers who had picked up horses, hither and thither, round the country.