THE FOREST AND THE FIELD. 



CHAPTER T. 



MY FIRST STEEPLE-CHASE. 



" And the fierce coursers urged their rapid pace 

 So swift, it seemed a flight, and not a race." 



Iliad. 



The ravages of time. — Indian sportsmen. — The rose-coloured 

 note and its consequences. — " The Land of the East."—" Moon- 

 light." — My first steeple-chases. — Preliminaries. — The start. 

 The race and the result. 



There is not a more jolly station between the 

 Himalaya and Cape Comorin than Secundrabad, 

 or rather there was not in my day, for the episode 

 I am about to relate occurred more than twenty 

 years ago, and since then the country has under- 

 gone great changes for the worse. Tempora 

 mutantur, I have only to look at my own dilapidated 

 hulk to mark the ravages that time and the 

 chances of war have effected, and I am painfully 



