360 SYSTEM OF KENNEL AND 



a swing which none but a thoroughbred could ac- 

 complish. 



" Ha ! ha !" he laughed, as Tom Harkaway got 

 a nasty one into the far ditch. " You don't seem to 

 get over 'em quite so easy as you expected. Very 

 fine riding/' chuckled Jem. " These hill men don't 

 know anything about double ditches and fences; 

 Hain't in their line a donkey could jump the biggest 

 fence in their country. Ride over our hounds ! 

 That's a good joke. Ha ! ha ! Come up, Duchess," 

 as he landed his mare over a sunk fence into a gentle- 

 man's park. 



The pressure, however, proving too sharp, the fox 

 made short work of it in the vale, having turned 

 again back for the downs, evidently with the inten- 

 tion of trying the earths in the gorse from which he 

 had been at first dislodged. He had dipped suffi- 

 ciently deep, notwithstanding, into the vale to draw 

 down the whole cavalcade after him ; and now ensued 

 a struggle more severe than the first race over the 

 open, the fox having made a circuit over about a 

 mile of the very stiffest enclosures before tacking 

 round, and the pace did not slacken. 



Will Headman was now to the fore, the light 

 weights being unable to take the lead from him 

 through the stiff blackthorn fences, which they could 

 not grapple with like men of greater power in the 

 saddle. During this semicircular burst our hunts- 

 man maintained his place and reputation as a first- 

 class rider to hounds, nulli secundus. Once let the 

 lead be taken from a huntsman to foxhounds by any 

 one of his hunt, and his authority is gone. There 



