RID/NG TO HOUNDS 23 



Now the men who can go well across country 

 on almost any horse, are so few as to be hardly 

 worth counting-. There are plenty of men who 

 will go for ten minutes, but I think it may be 

 laid down with certainty that at the end of 

 half an hour at any kind of pace over a fair 

 country, of the few^ men who are then really 

 with hounds the majority are there because 

 they have very good horses, and have ridden 

 them out knowing well that somewhere in the 

 lanes were their second horsemen. But those 

 who will read this book with most interest and 

 profit will have no second horse, and the better 

 the animal they ride the more care must they 

 take of him. Perhaps I can explain what I 

 mean by taking an instance. There were two 

 friends of my own who were both good riders 

 and hard men, one of whom seldom or never 

 trot to the end of a run. He went awav close, 

 too close the M.F.H. said, to hounds, and he 

 stuck to them till he was stopped by a fall, 

 which generally came sooner or later, and sel- 

 dom was delayed more than fifteen or twenty 

 niinutes. He was a o-ood rider and a bold, but 

 not a fine, horseman. He had not always first- 

 rate horses any more than the rest of us, but he 

 took no pains to make the most of them, nor 

 had he much knowledge of what hounds were 

 doino-. His voun^'er brother, who had less 



