A FIRST TASTE OF THE OPEN. 175 



costly fascinations of a Cesarewitch or a Cambridgeshire, are 

 left at the end of October with a sufficient margin to allow of 

 immediate drafting and replacing. The season has to be gone 

 through as it begins — and the worst horses probably drop in for 

 the best runs. No help for it now — we must " rustle " along 

 with what we have, conceal our fears, make a Marathon out of 

 each ponderous failure, and ape the jauntiness of youth, to whom 

 ■every horse is a " ripper," and every fence a means of joy. 



A FIRST TASTE OF THE OPEN. 



A VERY luxuriant autumn is this. The grass grows rankly ; 

 and the ditches are so carefully hidden that a three-season 

 hunter may well be excused for ignoring them — while neither 

 excuse nor apology is needed for the ill-will with which we 

 many-season riders regard the same. Shirk them we do, as 

 rigidly as is possible. But the latter half of October is a 

 seductive time ; and the most self-contained and conscientious 

 abstainers cannot but be now and again dragged out of them- 

 selves, in the stirring excitement of a short blind scurry with 

 fox-hounds. So it was, for instance, a few days since, on as wild 

 and wet a morning as ever prepared turf for the approaching 

 fray. Where it was, I will not tell you — for tales out of season 

 are tales of October hunting. But no prettier covert looks 

 down on a grassy vale than the ten-acre medley of gorse and 

 broom, privet and bramble, whence broke, at noon of the 

 drenching day in question, the last fox of a lively half-dozen. 

 Some twenty or thirty gruesome-looking mortals with true 

 delight heard the order to go, and hailed the chance to get 

 warm. Well they recognized the wooded knoll looming darkly 

 through the rain, across the fair but stoutly fenced vale. Well 

 aware were they that all their horses were fat ; many indeed 

 still undipped. But they remembered, too, how freely-gated 

 was that green plain — and fully they realised that among the 

 present little band there would be no rabid ambition for place 



