THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 187 



did what I did not at all like. He put his fore feet into 

 a ditch, dropped his hinder legs in a small brook, struck 

 the top rail of a timber fence very hard indeed, and was 

 altogether not by half so pleasant a horse to ride as he 

 had been for the first ten minutes. To say the truth, I 

 began not to like it, for the fences got very large and 

 strong, at least so they appeared to me. 



" ' A very stiff country this, sir,' said I to a gentleman 

 in black, who appeared to be going very much at his ease ; 

 ' devilish big fences, sir.' 



<w ' Pretty well for that, sir,' he replied; 'but you are 

 young enough, and strong enough. You've nothing to do 

 but to throw your heart over them, and follow it.' 



" My heart, however, proved stouter than my horse. I 

 went boring along, losing ground in every field we entered, 

 and being obliged to turn away from a stiff stile, with a 

 footbridge over a brook on the rising side, which I knew 

 I had not in me at the time, I lost sight of the leading 

 men, and of the hounds of course, only making my appear- 

 ance at the last, by the help of a turnpike road, with the 

 rest of the awkward squad, about ten minutes after the 

 fox had been killed, which he was, at the end of a 

 beautiful and very fast burst of thirty-eight minutes. 



"Nevertheless, all things considered, I had not great 

 reason to be dissatisfied with the occurrences of this day. 

 I certainly was in a very good place the first quarter of an 

 hour, and not in a bad one the next five minutes ; and, 

 now I think of it, I can account for my not being able to 

 go well to the end of the run. I recollect hearing Mr. 

 Somerby say, when at Amstead, that there was a sort of, 

 not ad valorem, but ad virtutem, price upon horses that 

 were, as mine were, ' well known in Leicestershire.' ' It 

 depends,' said he, 'on how long they can go. For ex- 

 ample,' resumed he, ' a horse that can go well for twenty 

 minutes will always fetch his 100 guineas, and if half an 

 hour, double that sum.' Now as I only gave 150 guineas 

 for Gentlemen, at Tattersall's, I had no reason to expect 

 to have gone farther than I did on that money. I shall, 

 however, in future require a little exposition of the words, 

 ' well known in Leicestershire ' whether for good, or for 

 evil. 



" I was rather surprised to find, judging from the state 

 of my own horse, and that of many others, that another 

 fox was to be drawn for, as, notwithstanding some of the 



