AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ODDS & ENDS 57 



wrote it on Lesterlin's curious defeat at the Curragh 

 and no cheque has ever looked so glorious again. 

 Unfortunately I shall never be a popular short 

 story writer ; I do something just wrong. 



Mr. Higgins was hunting the Limericks then for 

 Major Wise, who was at the war, and I began 

 hunting regularly again when he came back 

 from it. 



A very fine rider, with an extraordinary eye 

 for hounds. If he took a wrong turn he seemed 

 to know by some instinct exactly where to go to 

 pick them up. The Limerick pack had deteri- 

 orated greatly in these days and Major Wise 

 worked hard with them, leaving a really fine lot 

 when he gave them up. He was very popular 

 with the farmers. Their Uking for his cheery 

 voice and manner pulling the Hunt through 

 some troublous times. It was touch and go more 

 than once during those years. His best season 

 was his last, which was one of those record years 

 when good hunt follows good hunt so fast that one 

 is almost wiped out by the other. We had the 

 Ballyregan to Tervoe hunt that yeai almost a 

 record, I believe, for pace, an eight-mile point in 

 thirty-five minutes, only one man with hounds 

 and two people close behind when we killed at 

 Tervoe. I was the third, a long way in the rear. 



I was out one day in the stone-wall country 

 when he did a rather wonderful bit of hunting. 

 We were simply trailing a very stale line and 



