14 THE BEST OF THE FUN 



snipe-shooting ; and horses fairly splashed over it, without, 

 however, sinking deep through the marshy grass. Matters 

 were just properly settling themselves, and even the width 

 of the ditches had begun to seem less awe-inspiring, when, 

 at the end of twelve minutes, we jumped into the Ash- 

 bourne Road (close to the seventh milestone from Dublin), 

 and the stag was found to have been headed back. Under 

 ordinary circumstances, and on other ground, a breather 

 after some three miles' deep galloping would have been a 

 welcome gain. One could have trotted quietly through 

 gateways in the direction required, and have started off 

 again with recruited energy. Here, after being hemmed 

 in to the road for a hundred yards' saunter opposite a 

 forbidding narrow-back (a fence something like a Madras 

 mud-wall with a burying-hole beyond it), it became neces- 

 sary to ride through a farmyard having two deep water 

 ditches within the next fifty yards. (How these Irish 

 farmers get about their land with only a single, invariably 

 padlocked, gate on the whole farm is beyond my powers 

 of explanation). Somehow or other we at length re- 

 gained Brindley, who, while leading his field, had been 

 the first to realise the deer's double-back ; and, scarcely 

 had we done so, than the stag went to ground in a lofty 

 culvert beneath a lane. From the view began a second 

 scurry, in which we passed Ballymacarney fox-covert — 

 deer and hounds this time having all the best of it, for 

 the deep watercourses made progress slow and compli- 

 cated, and the long grassed turf was everywhere spongy 

 if not holding. One rivercourse (I believe it was the 

 Ward itself — or was it the " Lough of the Bay " ?) would 

 have driven us all back sorrowing in an English country. 

 You had to climb up a little wall-like bank, creep down 

 the almost perpendicular cutting for a horse's length, then 

 spring across eight or ten feet of water, and scramble an 

 equally perpendicular side beyond. These Irish hunters 

 in truth pass any ordinary Englishman's understanding. 

 A white horse showed us it was possible ; the huntsman 

 and his whip followed suit ; and accordingly we all (several 

 others being as untaught as myself) resigned ourselves to 

 our fate, arriving on the other side with eyes shut and 



