THE CHACE. 
glimpse of through the openings of a tall quickset-hedge 
which is between them, coming neck and croup into the 
adjoining field, from the top bar of a high, hog-backed 
stile. His eye might have been spared the unpleasing 
sight, had not his ear been attracted to a sort of pro- 
cumbit-humi-bos sound of a horse falling to the ground 
on his back, the bone of his left hip indenting the 
greensward within two inches of his rider's thigh. It 
is young Peyton*, who, having missed his second horse 
at the check, had been going nearly half the way in 
distress ; but from nerve and pluck, perhaps peculiar to 
Englishmen in the hunting field, but very peculiar to 
himself, got within three fields of the end of this brilliant 
run. The fall was all but a certainty ; for it was the 
third stiff timbered-fence that had unfortunately opposed 
him, after his horse's wind had been pumped out by 
the pace ; but he was too good to refuse them, and his 
horse knew better than to do so. 
The jEneid of Virgil ends with a death, and a chace 
is not complete without it. The fox dies within half a 
mile of Woodwell-head cover, evidently his point from 
the first, the pack pulling him down in the middle of a 
large grass field, every hound but one at his brush. 
Jack Stevens with him in his hands would be a subject 
refused, from the late Lord Middleton, the enormous sum of two thousand 
two hundred pounds for two of his horses, and on another occasion fifty 
pounds for the loan of one of them during the first run of the day from 
a certain cover, whether short or long. 
* The only son of Sir Henry Peyton, Bart., one of the best and 
hardest riders of the present day. 
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