WITH HORSE AND HOUND 



not only he but he who has a hot horse ; he who has no hand ; 

 he who has no heel, or a horse who knows not what heel means ; 

 for this riding is more like Australian bush-coursing, or Bombay 

 hog-hunting, than the pursuit of the wily animal over a civil- 

 ized country, as it appears in Leech's inimitable caricatures. 



' Therefore, of the thirty horsemen, some twenty wisely 

 keep the ride, and no shame to them. They can go well else- 

 where ; they will go well (certainly they will leave me behind) 

 when we reach the enclosures three miles off : but here they are 

 wise in staying on terra firma. 



' But there are those who face terram infirmam. Off turns 

 our Master, riding, as usual, as if he did not know he was 

 riding, and thereby showing how well he rides. 



* Off turns the huntsman ; the brave green coat on the 

 mouse mare ; the brave black coat on the black mare. Mark 

 those two last, if you do not know the country, for where the 

 hounds are there will they be to the last. Off turns a tall Irish 

 baronet ; the red coat who has ridden in Australia ; an old 

 gentleman who has just informed me that he was born close to 

 Billesden-Coplow, and looks as if he could ride anywhere, even 

 to the volcanoes of the moon, which must be a rough country, 

 to look at it through a telescope. Off turns a gallant young 

 Borderer, who has seen bogs and wolds ere now, but at present 

 grows mustachios in a militia regiment at Aldershot : a noble 

 youth to look at. May he prosper this day and all days, and 

 beget brave children to hunt with Lord Elcho when he is 

 dead and gone. And off turn poor humble I, on the old 

 screwed mare. I know I shall be left behind, ridden past, 

 possibly ridden over, laughed to scorn by swells on hundred- 

 and-fifty-guinea horses ; but I know the winter-garden, and 

 I want a gallop. Half an hour will do for me ; but it must be 

 a half hour of mad, thoughtless, animal life, and then if I can 

 go no further, I will walk the mare home contentedly, and do 

 my duty in that state of life to which Providence has been 

 pleased to call me. . . . 



* . . . Racing indeed ; for as Reinecke gallops up the 



26 



