20 THE BEST OF THE FUN 



tinkling music, as if to impress upon me that he had had 

 quite enough of my guidance, and that in future he meant 

 to be coachman. Anyhow, he ht on the top of the bank 

 Hke Leotard perching on his trapeze — giving me much the 

 sensation of being tied on to some aerial exhibitor — and 

 on he went into the next field with the same leisurely and 

 shockless gait. When in course of time he let himself 

 down into a road, so easily and gently that he would 

 scarcely have broken an egg had he lit on it, though 

 exacting a sore strain upon my power of remaining any- 

 thing like in the perpendicular, I breathed freely — the 

 breath of thankfulness and amazement. Now I found 

 myself in the good company from which I had never 

 wished to separate, and from whose guiding presence I 

 vowed nothing should again take me till the day was over. 

 They had come the last mile without jumping a fence (a 

 very uncommon feat in Ireland, I take it), while I had 

 been perspiring in wholly unnecessary, and possibly merely 

 fancied, peril ! After this we were again for a long time 

 at Kellistown, the pack running two or three foxes almost 

 to a standstill. 



Afterwards hounds took the open — this time by the 

 Old Covert, and by the steeple of Kellistown, to the banks 

 of the Burrin. These few minutes (to ground) lay over a 

 wide grass country, and were decked by a variety of 

 scene that would have made Mr. Sturgess happy. But 

 as I can neither draw horses tumbling upward into a 

 road — in attempting to spring high enough out of a bog 

 to reach the top of its stone-faced embankment — nor 

 depict them rolling downwards when landing into similar 

 soft ground beyond, my story must go bare of illustration. 

 What in my view is much more a matter of regret is that 

 a good gallop set properly going should have ended 

 abruptly and unexpectedly at an open rabbit-burrow, and 

 that my day's experience of a charming pack and (if repute 

 goes for anything) a phenomenal huntsman, one who with 

 all the knowledge of the craft that half a century of 

 practice has accumulated, combines the vigour and nerve 

 of a young man, should thus have been limited to the 

 opportunity of two brief scurries and a term of work in 



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