THE SKY PILOT 



179 



I thought not. Go down bottom, Master Arthur, of " Smalley Hall," 

 Co. Derby, and make room for your betters, for there were only five who 

 did the trick, Mr. Jones, Mr. and Mrs. Grossman, Mr. G. H. Lee, and the 

 huntsman, and for the brief, fierce, hot scurry to the stick heaps at 

 Matching Green, they were the guiding stars that enabled a scattered and 

 bewildered crowd to overtake hounds again. 'Faith ! had they run to High 

 Laver, Moreton, and Blake Hall at the same pace we should have com- 

 menced keeping Lent a day too soon. That reminds me of a good answer 

 of the General's to a Sky pilot on the day in question. " Not hunting in 

 Lent, my dear sir ? Hire a bad horse that can't go a little bit, and come 

 out regularly. What better penance could you have ? " Quite right, but 

 he would have to be a very bad 'un if the General could not extract some 

 fun out of him. 



Man Wood 



But I must take you back to the Fagot Sticks, where, if you were wise, 

 you ate your sandwiches. If you were truthful, you would have answered 

 like i\Ir. Howard, of Matching Hall, when asked if he got away with 

 them. Yes. At least, they were somewhere about here when I left INIan 

 Wood. 



Now, when that fox did come away from the stick heap — or, rather, 

 with a strict regard for veracity, when that stick heap came away from the 

 fox, for bundle by bundle it was pitchforked aside — he was foolish enough 

 to swim a pond, emerging like a drowned rat. I gave him three fields, but 

 in three fields he had brought hounds to their noses, and in as many more 

 had spreadeagled the field as he circled round below Brick Kilns, returning 

 to Man Wood up the sandy lane. Sandy ! The mud and water was flying 

 about as we splashed our way through in a fashion that I have never seen 

 equalled in all the years I have ridden this desperate ride. The Hunt 



