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CHAPTER XXYIIL 



OVER THE BORDER. 



Having what I may fairly call a "life experience" 

 of English hunting, and one covering, at intervals, 

 a score of years of the same sport in Ireland, it had 

 long been a wish of mine to see something of the 

 chase in the other sister-kingdom (one has to be so 

 very careful in these days not to offend any " national " 

 susceptibility that I should perhaps add that hunting 

 in at least three Welsh countries is familiar to me, 

 and that I have even had a — blank — day in Cornwall, 

 which I understand some Celtic purists say should be 

 considered a separate kingdom, or, at any rate, country). 

 Of Scottish hunting I knew little beyond the classic 

 facts that it produced a Whyte-Melville, who, un- 

 gratefully enough, nowhere describes the sport of 

 his own shire, or rather kingdom, of Fife ; and that 

 an Anstruther-Thomson thought well enough of it to 

 go from the Pytchley to it. On the other hand, 

 Surtees, who, as a Northumbrian, was a near neigh- 

 bour, made his famous hero sentence an offender to 

 be condemned to hunt in Berwickshire for the rest 

 of his life. I fancy, all the same, that a good deal 

 of his local colour comes from over the Border. Jock 

 Haggish, the Duke of Tergiversation's huntsman, 



