THE CHACE. 
whose noted old mare had just skimmed over the water 
like a swallow on a summer's evening. " It 's Middleton 
Biddulph," says one. " Pardon me," cries Mr. Mid- 
dleton Biddulph ; " Middleton Biddulph is here, and 
here he means to be ! " " Only Dick Christian *," answers 
Lord Forester, "and it's nothing new to him." "But 
he '11 be drowned," exclaims Lord Kinnaird. " I 
shouldn't wonder," observes Mr. William Coke. But 
the pace is too good to inquire. 
The fox does his best to escape: he threads hedge- 
rows, tries the out-buildings of a farm house, and once 
turns so short as nearly to run his foil; but the per- 
fection of the thing the hounds turn shorter than he 
does, as much as to say die you shall. The pace has 
been awful for the last twenty minutes. Three horses 
are blown to a stand-still, and few are going at their 
ease. " Out upon this great carcase of mine ! no horse 
that was ever foaled can live under it at this pace, and 
over this country," says one of the best welter-weights, 
as he stands over his four-hundred-guinea chestnut, then 
rising from the ground after giving him a heavy fall 
his tail nearly erect in the air, his nostrils violently 
distended, and his eye almost fixed. f "Not hurt, I 
hope," exclaims Mr. Maxse, to somebody whom he gets a 
* A celebrated rough-rider at Melton-Mowbray, who greatly distin- 
guished himself in the late grand steeple-chace from Rolleston. He is 
paid fifteen shillings per day for riding gentlemen's young horses with 
hounds. 
f The writer here alluded to that celebrated sportsman, as well as 
horseman, Mr Thomas Edge, of Nottinghamshire, who some years back 
