442 LEAVES FROM A HUNTING DIARY 



the little pitches and sat back in my seat to give her additional 

 support, when I felt a sudden shy, swerve, and blunder, and 

 recalled no more. 



When I came to I found myself in a cottage surrounded 

 by rustics who were handing me cold water with which I was 

 diligently washing my face in a tin bowl. They said I had 

 been doing this for a long time. I had used two pailsful 

 and had been talking incoherently, asking about my horse. 

 My first question on recovering my senses was an enquiry 

 for my horse, but they could tell me nothing. It appeared 

 that these cottagers being at their tea had heard a horse gallop 

 furiously along the road, and had walked out on either side to 

 their garden gates, but they could see nothing, and having 

 listened until they could no longer hear the horse's hoofs, had 

 returned to their evenino- meal. One of them, an old man, 

 having finished his tea, went across the road to carry some 

 milk to a neighbour, and in so doing stumbled over my 

 prostrate body, and shouted out that there was "a dead man 

 in the road." This brought out all his neighbours, who picked 

 me up and took me into a cottage and gave me cold water to 

 bathe my face. I was lying upon my back and upon my round 

 hat (which was crushed in), with my head towards whence I 

 had come and my heels whence I was going, having evidently 

 pitched on to my forehead and performed a somersault. I was 

 lying thus when they first came out, but the night was so 

 dark that though my mackintosh cape was of light colour 

 they had not seen me, and yet the road was so narrow that 

 no cart could have passed without going over me. And they 

 told me that within two minutes of getting me into the cottage 

 a cart had rolled past at a good pace, containing probably some 

 men returning from Ongar Market. 



According to their report, I must haxe lain in the road 

 some ten to fifteen minutes, and was nearly hall an hour in 

 the cottage before I became properly conscious, though I was 

 able to stand and talk all the time, and had spoken when they 

 lifted me up in the road. I had evidently had a most merciful 

 and providential escape from an accident which might have 

 been fatal. Had my foot clung to the stirrup, had I fallen into 

 one of the many ponds by the roadside, or even into a ditch 

 in their then flooded state, or had I lain ten minutes longer in 

 the road, I mioht never have been able to record the misadven- 

 ture nor would anyone have known the cause. That the cape 

 must have made a most unearthly crackling in the blast was 

 evident from an amusing remark of one of the cottagers, who 



