"cognac" bolts 363 



the brook was unusually wide and looked boggy, and I was 

 approaching it at a bend which made it wider, with an upright 

 fence on the other side looking like a place which was beyond 

 any horse's power to clear, and thinking that he must go clean 

 into the fence if he cleared the brook, but knowing that in his 

 present mood I should get into difficulties if I attempted to 

 stop him, I exclaimed, " You brute ! if you will have it you 

 shall," and applying the persuaders put him straight at it, 

 when to my astonishment he cleared the whole scarcely 

 touching a twig, and was over the following fence in a twinging. 

 His blood, however, was now thoroughly up, his mouth dead ; 

 the hounds unluckily coming to a check, and the fields small 

 and strongly fenced, being paddocks near a farmhouse, I was 

 unable to stop him. I jumped one or two fences and avoided 

 other places until we came to a small paddock with trees of 

 about twenty or thirty years' growth in the hedge, thickly 

 planted, and a brook beyond. Though impracticable I saw he 

 intended to have it ; I was powerless to stop him, having used 

 the short rein on my left arm to no purpose, and there was not 

 room to turn him even if I had the power to do so. A disaster 

 being inevitable, I considered w^hat was best to be done, and 

 removing my feet from the stirrups and loosening my seat in 

 the saddle just as he came to the trees, and charged the place, 

 letting go of the reins I shifted myself in the saddle throwing 

 my right side and shoulder forward and keeping back my 

 head. The next moment, after being suspended in the trees 

 for a second, in fact forced between them by the impetus 

 of the horse, I dropped on to my back in the brook, under 

 water, but thanks to being a swimmer reached the other side 

 easily. 



" Cognac " who had been nearly if not entirely under water 

 too, was caught in the farmyard and brought back to me, but 

 having lost my whip I was looking in the water hoping to see 

 it, and endeavouring in vain to induce the yokels to venture 

 after it, when casting up my eyes I saw it suspended in the 

 trees marking the spot where I had descended, and Roffey 

 the old Huntsman who then rode up said, " I should not have 

 thought horse and man could have come alive out of such a 

 place." I remounted, but the hounds being laid on again, 

 " Cognac " immediately bolted up a hill with me, I felt ex- 

 hausted, my right leg weak and powerless ; fearing that I might 

 damage some one else as well as myself, as soon as I was able 

 to stop him I dismounted, led him a little way and then rode 

 back to Tring, wet throui^h. without crloves, and bitterlv cold. 



