196 The Best Fourteen-Hander in England. 



flower-bed, lawn, and shrubbery were the old man's chief delight, 

 and, it is needless to say, were scrupulously kept j and, if I had 

 wanted to offend him, I do not think I could have chosen a more 

 effectual mode than by riding over this lawn, where every horse- 

 print would have left an indelible mark. Even to pluck a flower 

 without first asking leave was a grave offence. I mention all this 

 that the reader may be acquainted w r ith the premises, and in some 

 measure prepared for what is to come. One of the stable lads, as 

 I said, led the mare round, and the old man hopped down to the 

 gate to open it for me, that he might see her canter along the road 

 and watch her action. I do not know whether it was that a change 

 in the bridle wrought an entire change in the mare, but I had no 

 sooner got settled in my saddle than she broke away from the lad 

 at her head, reared up, and then, suddenly flying round as if on a 

 pivot, lashed out her hind legs within a few inches of his head. 

 She then sprang over the little iron fence, right into the old 

 man's very finest hyacinth-bed ; dashed through the rhodo- 

 dendron bush, crushing his favourite flowers right and left, 

 with as little remorse as if they were only so much gravel j 

 iumped out on to the lawn, and then rushed into the planta- 

 tion, through which she dragged me, dashing me first against 

 one tree, then against another, till we came down to the haw- 

 haw at the bottom, which she cleared at a bound, and, as soon as 

 she felt the turnpike-road under her feet, went off, with her ears 

 laid back and her head stretched out, at a speed which the old man 

 declared (as we shot by him, standing with the open gate in his 

 hand), if it would only last, was good enough to win all the 

 Hollerton Cups in England. I have been through some thickish 

 bullfinches in my time, but never through such a "stitcher" as 

 this. It is a miracle that I kept my seat, and, as the sequel will 

 prove, it would have been quite as well for me if I had not. But 

 I did not come orTscathless my new hat was flattened just as if I 

 had been " bonneted/' and, had not my nose prevented it, my head 

 would certainly have come through the crown ; one arm of my 

 best black coat was torn completely off, at least hung on only by a 



