142 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



that of the recipient of recent blessings. Do you remember 

 Gerard Ainslie (was it not ?), who, a gentleman born and 

 nourished in luxury, had by stress of fortune for some time 

 been forced to do his own cooking and clothes-mending at the 

 gold diggings, and who suddenly, by the death of a lamented 

 aunt, found himself in a position of positive affluence ? He 

 felt so generous, " he felt so good." A chapter on his state of 

 mind would not have conveyed so much as that one little 

 sentence thus expressed by one of our best modern judges of 

 men and women. 



But this is all very much by the way. I'll give you one of 

 my usual mounts on Pegasus with pleasure, and I'll borrow for 

 you a pair of spectacles that shall help you peer into the foggy 

 darkness of Monday. Take the old horse on trust, that's all — 

 give him credit for such wind and condition as you want, turn 

 his head loose if you will, but don't call him to account if he 

 fails to keep it all the while exactly straight — for Pegasus 

 affects not to compete with an ordnance map, nor will he 

 " assume a virtue if he hath it not." " No, sirree, cooking is a 

 thing as I despise," said the only unemployed man of a Western 

 hunting-party, when asked to turn his attention to preparing 

 the midday meal. Incivility he held to be no sin. Admitted 

 ignorance is gross crime in that country of universal self-suffi- 

 ciency. And, unlike most of his fellows, he had never learned 

 to cook. So, though no actual idler, he preferred independence 

 or even rudeness, to such a shameful confession as inability 7 . 

 Pegasus, on the same lines, is loth to admit that his geography 

 lesson is not yet thoroughly learned. How should it be, when 

 on at least three occasions out of four in the late great series 

 of runs, both the country and much of the day's doings have 

 been shrouded in almost impenetrable mist. In a fog the 

 Grafton called together, at Preston Capes, the best and biggest 

 field it has been my fortune to see in the Southern Midlands ; 

 in a fog they drew the two woods immediately below the place 

 of meeting, and in a fog they followed a stale line for half a mile 

 up to Fawsley House. Almost in darkness they moved on a 



