GUY FAWKES' DAY 29 



always run hard over Fawsley, and a galloping hack is 

 the best conveyance, aided always by a ready crop-handle 

 and a vigorous arm. Now and then it happens that the 

 gate is all too small, the whip and arm all too unskilled 

 or unmasculine, the gate slams, a cheery boy on an 

 unmouthed pony charges headlong into our midst, and 

 we don't like Fawsley as well as hounds do. 



It was a lovely day to ride to covert — even on your 

 own hunter, to my mind the least pleasurable of all con- 

 veyances. I generally have quite enough of my beast 

 before he makes his last stumble into the stable yard. 

 When I am doing covert-lad for myself, I am merely 

 enacting the part of dry-nurse to my animal — soothing 

 his tantrums and yielding to his vagaries. I can't even 

 afford to get his back down by means of a good gallop. 

 He has it all his own way, and takes delight in proving it 

 by making me as uncomfortable as possible. A brougham 

 home I shall never attain to — but a galloping hack to 

 covert, if only the hunter of the day after to-morrow, is 

 almost an essential luxury. It is an economy of fatigue, 

 a fillip to the spirits, and adds ten per cent, to the pleasure 

 of the day. 



I never seem to myself to have grasped what has gone 

 on during the day (I mean among my fellow men and 

 women — for I seldom dare, till the day's ended, take my 

 eye off " those confounded hounds " — if ever I do they 

 invariably pay me out for it) — no, not until I am wreathing 

 my nose in smoke and my soul in after-dinner reflection. 

 Now the man whom of all others I revere (in my particular 

 and perhaps mischosen sphere) is the fox-hunter who rides 

 not for glory, but because he means to be with hounds, 

 whether all the world be there before him or whether 

 he has that world savaging at his coat-tails. Such an one 

 1 saw to-day. I won't tell you whether he wore pink or 

 black after the essay — nor before, if he will in all friend- 

 ship leave it to me. But I ask you plainly, would you 

 have the physical pluck to take a very wet and very dis- 

 coloured certainty, rather than go only eixty yards back, 

 with your chin and your moral courage both high in the 

 air, to join hounds and a hundred folk, who are already 



