WITH HOESE AND HOUND 183 



deserve, for he, with the keen and experienced eye of a 

 huntsman, knows full well that if once the quarry gains 

 yonder chain or boulder -strewn kopjes, towards which 

 it is heading, the run will prove bloodless. No horse ever 

 yet foaled could find a footing up the side of those steep, 

 rocky hills, and the hot rays of the sun will already have 

 dissipated what little scent might have been found when 

 the scant herbage which clothes them was wet with dew. 

 For forty minutes have the hounds been running without 

 the slightest check, and at a pace they seldom, if ever, 

 showed in their native shires, for beyond the walls 

 enclosing the angry Dutchman's farm not so much as a 

 spruit has been met with during the run, and never was 

 such a burning scent. By Jove ! the buck is pointing 

 towards the reed-fringed pan of water which lies shimmer- 

 ing under the bright rays of the sun like a sheet of 

 burnished steel. Yes, in he plunges, and now it is a case 

 of sit down and ride, and the devil take the hindmost. 

 " Forrard ! forrard ! forrard ! my little beauties," again 

 cries the huntsman, as he rides close to the stems of the 

 hounds, as though his Satanic majesty were behind him. 

 " Hell for leather " we go, each man striving to outride 

 his fellow, heedless of the fact that his mount is sobbing 

 out, " Bellows to mend " — heedless of anything on earth 

 in his struggle to be in at the death. 



By George ! what a horrible purler the man on the big 

 Free-Stater has gone, as his mount puts a foot into an 

 antbear earth, turns a complete somersault, and shoots 

 his rider out of the saddle like a bag of nails : but 



