FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 243 



out in time, and our headway rolled us both 

 over in the mud, I flat on my back. Dick got 

 up just in time for his pastern to strike me in 

 the face as I was rising, giving me a cut lip, a 

 mouthful of blood, and a black and blue nose- 

 bridge. My appearance has, on occasions, been 

 more respectable and my temper more serene 

 than as I ran, soiled and bleeding, over the 

 ploughed ground, calling to some workmen to 

 "catch my horse." 



I was soon up and away again. There seemed 

 some confusion in the run, and the master being 

 out of sight, I followed one of the whips as he 

 struck into a blind path in a wood. It was a 

 tangled mass of briers, but he went in at full 

 pace, and evidently there was no time to be lost. 

 At the other side of the copse there was a set 

 of low bars, and beyond this a small, slimy ditch. 

 My leader cleared the bars, but his horse's hind 

 feet slipped on the bank of the ditch, and he fell 

 backwards with an ugly kind of sprawl that I had 

 no time to examine, for Dick took the leap easily 

 and soon brought me into a field where, on a little 



