COURSING 



the cliff. We are all on foot — and pray what horse could 

 gallop through among all these quagmires, over all the hags 

 in these peat-mosses, over all the water-cressy, and puddocky 

 ditches, sinking soft on hither and thither side, even to the 

 two-legged leaper's ankle or knee — up that hill on the perpen- 

 dicular strewn with flint — shivers — down those loose hanging 

 cliffs — through that brake of old stunted birches with stools 

 hard as iron — over that mile of quaking muir where the plover 

 breeds— and — finally — up, up, up, to where the dwarfed 

 heather dies away among the cinders, and in winter you might 

 mistake a flock of ptarmigan for a patch of snow. The thing 

 is impossible — so we are all on foot — and the fleetest keeper 

 that ever footed it in Scotland shall not in a run of three miles 

 give us sixty yards. " Ha ! Peter, the wild boy, how are you 

 off for wind ? " — we exultingly exclaim in giving Red- jacket the 

 go-by on the bent. But see, see, they are bringing her back 

 again down the Red Mount — glancing aside, she throws them 

 all three out — yes, all three, and few enow too, though fair play 

 be a jewel, and ere they can recover, she is ahead a hundred 

 yards up the hill. There is a beautiful trial of bone and 

 bottom ! Now one, and then another, takes almost imper- 

 ceptibly the lead ; but she steals away from them inch by 

 inch — beating them all blind — and suddenly disappearing, 

 Heavens knows how, leaves them all in the Im-ch. With out- 

 lolling tongues, hanging heads, panting sides, and drooping 

 tails, they come one by one down the steep, looking somewhat 

 sheepish, and then lie down together on their sides, as if indeed 

 about to die in defeat. She has carried away her cocked fud 

 unscathed for the third time, from Three of the Best in all 

 broad Scotland — nor can there any longer be the smallest 

 doubt in the world, in the minds of the most sceptical, that she 

 is — what all the country side had long known her to be — a 

 Witch. . . .' 



One of the best coursing essays ever written is that 

 wherein ' The Druid ' describes Master M'Grath's second 

 Waterloo Cup in 1869. 



157 



