20 RIDING 



steadfast career to the end, whether of killed, run-to-ground, or 

 lost ; that he jumped the inevitable brook in his own masterly 

 fashion, though without previously announcing his contempt for 

 it in Lord Gardner's historical formula of ' a fig for the Whissen- 

 dine,' and that having procured his second horse he would be 

 fully equal to any emergency provided by an afternoon fox. 



So fares it, and so may it ever fare with the true fuglemen 

 of the hunt, the favoured few who, mounted on the best horses 

 the world has ever seen, have the requisite nerve and know- 

 ledge so exquisitely combined that they can brave and suc- 

 cessfully overcome dangers which, to a man in whom either 

 quality unduly preponderates, would be insurmountable. * He 

 doesn't know his danger ' is a remark frequently heard, apropos 

 of some ardent and rash beginner in the art of riding to 

 hounds, who is seen attacking well-nigh impregnable fortresses 

 of timber or thorn, when neither pace nor other circumstance 

 call for such display of heroism ; sometimes getting over by a 

 fluke, sometimes ' meeting his friend,' but always with equani- 

 mity, and always rising unhurt. No, he does not know his 

 danger, but he very soon learns it, the luck cannot last, 



In a rattling gallop with hound and horse 



You may chance to reverse the medal 

 On the sward, with the saddle your loins across, 



And your hunter's loins in the saddle. 



And he ultimately blends his valour with the necessary amalgam 

 of discretion, in which case he developes into the real artist, 

 or he overdoes the discretion part and becomes a hard funker, 

 or sinks into the ordinary line rider. 



Mr. Walter Little Gilmour, 1 one of the best known and 

 boldest heavy weights who ever crossed Leicestershire, speaks 

 with the authority derived from more than fifty consecutive 



1 Mr. Gilmour excelled in all sports, being as skilful with rod and gun as 

 he was strong and resolute in the saddle ; yet if we had to describe him in one 

 short sentence, it would be ' he was the Bayard of the hunting-field.' He 

 was the last survivor of all the knights who rode in the Eglinton tourna- 

 ment, where, on account of his size and strength, the role of the Black Knight 

 was allotted to him. Coeur de Lion could have had no fitter representative. 



