CHAPTER VIII. 



" Though fast fox and hounds, there were men by my troth, 

 Whose ambition it was to go faster than both." 



IN 1873 I left the Vale of White Horse, and went to the 

 Empress of Austria's Hunt at Buda-Pesth in Austro- 

 Hungary. Jack Carter got me the berth as first whipper-in, 

 he being the huntsman there, and I went out with him. The 

 country was a good, wild hunting country, full of foxes, but 

 not a sporting country. A good scenting country generally, 

 but without any obstacles to jump, consequently hounds 

 were much over-ridden. Sometimes there were as many as 

 fifteen foxes in a covert, generally a bog or reed bed. We 

 didn't holloa foxes av^ay in that country, where they were 

 so numerous, but let hounds hunt their own fox, keeping the 

 pack, of course, as much together as possible. There were 

 capital fields as a rule out — 200 to 300 horsemen in scarlet 

 when the Emperor and Empress were out, and several 

 ladies. The Emperor was not a good horseman over a 

 country, but the Empress, poor thing — such a beautiful tall 

 figure — everyone knows what she could do on a horse ! I 

 shall never forget her to my dying day, and wish I could 

 have a shot at the cove who assassinated her. I wouldn't 

 miss him ! In Hungary it was my misfortune to contract 

 the acclimatizing fever— something Uke the ague, and I was 

 compelled to go to the hospital at Buda-Pesth, where I 



