ITS KIRBY GATE. 49 



We quickened his apprehension with cold steel; and we 

 appealed to his after-feelings with hot words and a lusty 

 malacca. But, for all that, he would hold to the delusion that 

 grass meant turf, and that apparent substance need never 

 represent empty space. In several instances the actual void 

 made room for solid horseflesh ; and in a small multitude of 

 cases the hidden ditch only revealed itself when probed in 

 unwilling discovery. But when the pace serves, a struggle 

 counts for nothing : an escape is a triumph. It is only when a 

 crowd comes up for single execution in turn that real timidity 

 asserts itself in its most hideous shape. Teeth drawn one by 

 one is the only equivalent to fall after fall while you wait your 

 turn. They are the truly brave, the iron-nerved, who can 

 submit to this always. With many truer cowards may be 

 their hair would grow grey and all their joy and fun be gone, 

 had they watched the peril every day instead of, when possible, 

 leaving at least some of it behind them. In this brief gallop 

 Leicester arid agriculture did most to lessen all terrors by a 

 jaunty example and contempt and the chief samplers were 

 Mr. Hicks on a bobtailed chestnut, Mr. Wade on his smart 

 brown, and Mr. Black on a five-year-old. The subject of the 

 riding, and its cloudy, imaginary, difficulties dismissed, it has 

 only to be added that in the midst of Kirby Village this fox hid 

 himself in some nook above or underground. 



ITS KIRBY GATE. 



As time goes, each Kirby Gate may perhaps, be reckoned as 

 one more wrinkle on the forehead, an extra-crop of grey hair, 

 another stride towards age and another step from youth. Writer 

 and reader never suppose each other old the former because 

 he finds youth indulgent, the latter because the topic of all 

 light literature is almost always associated with youth. We 

 are all young. Let us be young as we are when toasting fox- 

 hunting after Kirby Gate. Gout is for the morrow, low spirits 



