152 RIDING RECOLLECTIONS. 



youth, its excessive leanness, and the unusual shabbiness 

 of its accoutrements. Inspecting these more narrowly, 

 if you can get near enough, you begin to grudge the 

 sums you have paid Bartley, or Wilkinson and Kidd, 

 for the neat turn-out you have been taught to consider 

 indispensable to success. You see that a horse may cross 

 a dangerous country speedily and in safety, though its 

 saddle be pulpy and weather-stained, with unequal 

 stirrup-leathers, and only one girth ; though its bridle 

 be a Pelham, with a noseband, and without a curb- 

 chain, while one rein seems most untrustworthy, and 

 the other, for want of a buckle, has its ends tied in 

 a knot. And yet, wherever the hounds go, thither 

 follow this strangely-equipped pair. They arrive "at 

 a seven-foot bank, defended by a wide and, more for- 

 bidding still, an enormously deep ditch on this side and 

 with nothing apparently but blue sky on the other. 

 While the man utters an exclamation that seems a 

 threat, a war-cry, and a shout of triumph combined, 

 the horse springs to the summit, perches like a bird, 

 and disappears buoyantly into space as if furnished, 

 indeed, with wings, that it need only spread to fly away. 

 They come to a stone-gap, as it is termed ; neither 

 more nor less than a disused egress, made up with 

 blocks of granite into a wall about five feet high, and 



