PINCH-ME-NEAR, FOREST 



ride him till he dropped.' Then he would 'skin 

 him alive, and make his hide into a hair trunk ' 

 then he would cut it into whip thongs -next into 

 shoe-strings finally he would give him ' to the 

 first mugger he met.' 



As Mrs. Glasse would say, however, ' first catch 

 your horse,' and this seemed a remote possibility, 

 for though our master in the course of a two 

 miles' tramp, which he called ten, did get a view 

 of him once, the grass was of too coarse and 

 uninviting a character to induce the animal to 

 take more than a passing snatch as he went, 

 which he did at a pace that seemed well calcu- 

 lated to last for ever. At length our master was 

 fairly exhausted, and coming to a part of the 

 forest that ran out into rocks and sandy heathery 

 hills, he threw himself upon his back on a large 

 flat stone, and kicking up first one leg and then 

 the other, to let the bog-water out of his boots, 

 moaned and groaned audibly. Beginning at a 

 guinea, he bid up to a hundred and twenty, to 

 be back at Handley Cross, and two hundred 



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