22 8 THE MASTER OF HOUNDS 



road work. Bucks is hilly, Berks is deep. A slow or 

 underbred horse is soon blown, if not actually out- 

 paced, by staghounds, and the more confidence you 

 have in his jumping and his courage the greater the 

 disaster when it comes. After twenty minutes you 

 would not know the horse, poor devil ! As he rolls 

 and slobbers along, he would not know himself. Is 

 this the animal that devoured the first four fields like a 

 tiger, and jumped like an india-rubber ball ? With the 

 thoroughbred horse it is just the other way. He is 

 often a bad begmner, but the farther he goes the 

 better he goes. The first fence he all but fell from 

 getting too near it; the second fence, not liking the look 

 of some straggling thorns, he came round ; the third 

 fence, he left his hind legs. But, though annoyed 

 or disappointed with him, you know he does not mean 

 falling, and you wait his own good time. Now you 

 have been going for the best part of an hour, the 

 claims of high descent have asserted themselves, the 

 best blood of a century is coursing and mantling 

 through his veins, he swells the muscles of his neck 

 and cracks his nostrils in patrician disdain of every 

 difficulty : he is jumping bigger and bigger, galloping 

 with the force of a steam-engine, collecting himself 

 with the balance of a rope-dancer. You know what it 

 is to be really carried." 



It must be remembered that one of the most difficult 

 things for persons in authority out stag-hunting is to 

 know when to stop hounds and when to press a deer. 

 Now, in fox-hunting, the hero of the day is the man 

 who is first in at the death. In stag-hunting the^hero 



