CATCH HIM YOURSELF, THEN I 4II 



round a ploughed held, vainly endeavouring to get him over a 

 fence and the horse making away with him, I shouted to him 

 to take the horse into the road and keep him quiet, and the 

 next I saw of him, just as I reached the road,, was the horse 

 galloping down it, running away with his rider with one rein 

 broken and hanging down, and passing me like a shot. 



It may be imagined what were likely to be my sensations 

 at seeing a horse thus treated belonging to me, and which one 

 was just going to hunt, and especially a horse of a teniper like 

 "The Clipper," which takes so little to rile and render un- 

 governable. Shouting to some men to stop the horse, the 

 fellow managed to turn him and come back towards me. As 

 he approached me I asked him why he had not attended to my 

 instructions to take the horse into the road instead of galloping 

 him over the ploughed fields? "Oh!" said he, "you black- 

 guard me, do you, for catching your horse, catch him yourself 

 then," and before he came within reach he jumped off the horse 

 and turned him loose in the road with his head away from me. 

 This was agreeable, but calling out to some men to stop him 

 from passing I dodged the horse and turned him into the stable 

 yard of the Inn at Willingale. Up came the fellow who had 

 ridden him, whom I then perceived to be drunk, commencing a 

 string of abuse and looking pugilistic. Though the fellow 

 deserved a horse-whipping rather than any other recompense, I 

 tendered him some pence to get rid of the botheration, telling 

 him that it would have been a shillino- had he brous^ht me the 

 horse instead of turning him loose again, but this he indignantly 

 refused, demanding half-a-crown, to be spent in drink, and 

 forcibly opposing my orders to take the horse out of the stable, 

 until his demand was complied wuth. 



It was one of those occasions when the greatest self-denial 

 is requisite to control the feelings which prompted me to pitch 

 into the rascal, regardless of the two or three stone weight in 

 his favour and I was disgusted with the man who officiated as 

 ostler and with some yokels around, who instead of helping me 

 evidently abetted the drunken scamp in the hope of sharing the 

 drink. Finding at last that the fellow lied in representing 

 himself to be the master of the public house, I went round and 

 summoned the landlord to my assistance and a hunting farmer 

 riding by at the moment, I requested him to stay and then the 

 fellow, whom everyone professed not to know, seeing that I 

 was no lono-er alone, offered no resistance to mv mountino' and 

 riding away. When next I put my hand in my pocket I found 

 my handkerchief gone and so I suppose he picked my pocket 

 for want of extorting the half-crown or getting the sixpence. 



