58 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



story out of their adventures and achievements, and they told 

 it somehow thus that, after fording the Gaddesby Brook, they 

 were called upon to ride the country foot-path that leads to 

 Queniboro' ; that such foot-paths, with their greasy stiles, are 

 best avoided, but that the high strong hedges on either hand 

 left them no choice. Yet the worthy sportsman whose four- 

 year-old rolled over a rabbit hole, leaving him to take the whole 

 succession on foot, and in orthodoxy, negotiated them with no 

 more comfort than did his comrades. The four-year-old alone ex- 

 tracted boundless fun out of them, taking each in irreproachable 

 form, seizing his turn without jostling, though resolutely declin- 

 ing to be caught for miles. By that time weight carriers were 

 beginning to pant and tire ; and narrator assured me it was 

 only excess of delicacy and a superhuman effort of self control 

 that prevented his claiming the runaway, and in exchange 

 leaving his own pumped-out machine tied to a gateway. I 

 leave it to the public to determine if he would have been right. 

 The end would surely have justified the deed, would it not ? 

 But then, as the opportunity came only just before the Queni- 

 boro' Brook, would he have dared to ride the runaway at the 

 water, and risked the fate of Mr. Brocklehurst and Mr. V. H. 

 Barclay or, meeting it, to have awaited the coming of the 

 strong stranger in boots ? The maxim of riding your friend's 

 horse as you would your own might scarcely have been found 

 to apply, if the friend totally unprepared had come upon the 

 apple of his eye cast in the rushes, or only held up from drown- 

 ing by his new bridle. The Queniboro' Brook is another of 

 those deep-cut and erratic streams that ruin our waterjumping 

 in Leicestershire. Here was an instance in point. Capt. Smith 

 struck it where the most resolute of chesnuts that ever looked 

 through a combination of bridles could not possibly have got 

 half way over ; Count Kinsky swept it in a big place ; Mons. 

 Deschamps glided blandly over an extravagant one the rest 

 trotted through, a few yards away. Fences continued thickly 

 for a quarter of a mile ; then gave way to gates and gaps till 

 three-and-twenty minutes had been scored, and near Barkby 



