CASUALTIES 



431 



On over the Green, what a contrast to the life and excitement of the 

 opening meet, only one charioteer''' to be discerned driving a smart cob ; 

 waving his whip in recognition he drove on, leaving behind the solitude 

 he had broken. Man Wood and its associations, its possibilities and 

 disappointments, gave food for reflection ere we had left White Roothing, 

 with its mill and gale-driven sails. Where was the boy at the gate ? We 

 found him on the return journey, and he caught the coin if we didn't the 

 hounds. Under the hedges, the headlands showed little signs of the 

 drying winds, and the poached holes were full of water, while ten yards 

 out the fields were rapidly hardening. The last gate was half open. The 

 busy straw-tiers spied us a little too late, otherwise it would have been 

 shut with one of the deft binders in waiting. Past the white bridge, we 

 were getting very near the King William, the point we were making for, 



Poplars 



though some half-hour earlier than we had intended, and unmistakable 

 signs of the presence of hounds in the immediate neighbourhood broke 

 unexpectedly upon us. Two ladies, hacking homewards, one, I sad to 

 relate, with bandaged face, the result of a too bold and venturesome leap 

 under a tree, reported hounds were in Lords. A solitary horseman, J in 

 bright scarlet, with bowed back, reached the inn as we rode up, eliciting 

 our hearty commiseration as he lamented his bad luck in having just 

 lamed his favourite hunter. 



However, there was little time to be lost. First horses were having 

 their gruel, and the second were not to be seen, an ominous sign that we 

 had arrived just a few minutes too late. "Not a sound to be heard, not 

 a glimpse of anything," said the familiar figure at the King William, as 



Mr. G. Harris. 



t Mrs. Pigott. 



t Mr. Guy Gilbey. 



