THE REV. JOHN RUSSELL. 49 



eve. Rivalry was running high, and the warning 

 was Httle heeded by a couple of Heythrop 

 thrusters, who, pressing too closely on Will's 

 heels, gave their horses no chance of distinguish- 

 ing the water lying on the bank from the real 

 channel of the brook ; consequently they 

 floundered headlong into the flood ; and, like 

 the famous Brewers, immortalized by Mr. 

 Egerton-Warburton, they very narrowly escaped 

 " a watery bier." 



Russell and Dauncey were more fortunate ; 

 the latter on a game little mare, well bred and 

 stout as whalebone, and the other on old 

 Charlie, taking it evenly in their strides, and 

 landing together on the right side, a bowshot 

 clear of the pack ; while Lord Jersey, Sir Henry 

 Peyton, Captain Evans, and Tom Wingfield — 

 men whom nothing but the Styx itself could 

 stop — were the only others well up, as the 

 hounds, now all but mute and carrying a 

 desperate head, were breaking the fence into 

 the lower quarter of Gravenall Wood. 



But the fox was sinking ; and Will Long, 

 acting as whip and huntsman in one (for Philip 

 Payne, Stephen, and Griff Lloyd had not yet 

 crossed the Rubicon), knew it full well, as he 

 dashed over the cover fence and rang out the 

 death-knell in a strain of ecstatic delight. 



"Never before," said Russell, as he described 

 the scene to an old friend, " never before had 



E 



