18 RIDING 



which our pioneer has vanished, hoping that he may have done 

 more for us in the way of cleavage than is outwardly apparent, 

 so with such resolution as we can muster we sit down and drive 

 to our doom ; our drooping spirit has in the inevitable but 

 mysterious way been communicated to our horse, he scotches 

 a bit as the impervious looking blackthorn frowns upon him, 

 then makes a sort of half-hearted jump which has just suffi- 

 cient force to land him with forelegs in the ditch and chest 

 against the rail, which is cracked but not (till now) broken, and 

 over which we turn as imperial a crowner as ever dinted the 

 elastic sward of a fifty acre grazing ground. 



What business had this child there to ride ? 



But little or none at all ; 

 Yet I held my own for a time in the pride 



That goeth before a fall. 



1 Beggar my eyes, what a buster ! ' was the first articulate 

 groan of a celebrated whipper-in as he lay prone and gasping 

 for breath after a slight misunderstanding between a four-year- 

 old and a blind ditch. Such too is the nearest approach to an 

 idea which presents itself to us during the five minutes succeed- 

 ing partial recovery and an erect position, while as in a dream 

 we mechanically occupy ourselves in the process known as 

 1 picking up the pieces,' which consists in extricating a dazed 

 and battered head from a shapeless hat, and in endeavouring 

 to make it less of a hood and more of an ordinary topper, in 

 ascertaining if both collar-bones and all our ribs are broken, 

 or if not how many of each, in retrieving a hunting whip, and 

 digging a spur out of the ground. These little matters attended 

 to we limp to our steed, who has hobbled himself with fore feet 

 through the reins, and is standing a few paces off with a very 

 rueful countenance, and a turf sod neatly packed under his 

 brow-band as if he had been out catering for a caged dickey 

 bird. With many a ' Hold-up, horse,' we disengage his hoofs 

 from the bridle, throw it back over his neck, and prepare once 

 more to clamber into saddle, when lo ! we observe with dismay 



