THE INFLUENZA SCOURGE 67 



the hounds, meantime, being wholly unconsidered items. 

 He must have been almost glad when his fox beat him 

 and delivered him. 



The day, though not so malevolently boisterous as its 

 predecessors, was not sufficiently balmy to tempt the 

 hundreds to see it out. The wind was liver-searching 

 in its keenness at Yelvertoft Fieldside, as we stood on 

 the bridge with the powers-that-be — the latter, not impro- 

 bably, musing whether " the burden laid upon them was 

 greater than they could bear." Heaven forfend ! To be 

 brief, covert after covert was drawn ; no fox, till the fish- 

 pond at Hemplow, then a brace. With one of these, but 

 with never a scent, Goodall worked out a run of nearly 

 an hour and a half by sheer, dogged perseverance, aided 

 by the fact that for some reason unknown his fox waited 

 more than once for his coming. Thus, this afternoon we 

 rode over a rough highland line, to the right of Cold 

 Ashby and Thornby, to ground in the valley between 

 Cottesbrook and Purser's Hill, bringing hounds comfort- 

 ably near kennels about five o'clock. When I said high- 

 land, I ought to have written it Irish-highland ; for over 

 most of the obstacles that stood in our way we had to 

 creep and crawl, vociferating " Come up ! " or in some 

 cases rolling about because our horses were altogether 

 too English. Taking extremes from which to formulate 

 a general rule (an entirely false method, no doubt), the 

 difference between an Irish horse and an English horse 

 as applied to fashion of jumping may be defined as that 

 in the one case you ask the horse to think for himself, 

 and to act altogether on his own discretion ; in the other 

 you give him his orders and bid him obey them without 

 stopping to think — treat him, in fact, on the same footing 

 as the nobler animal who takes your hunter on to covert. 

 You want no sticky horse to fly over the Shires, any 

 more than you can do with a flying horse in Meath. But 

 it is very pleasant when your mount will either creep or 

 fly, according to order. 



How would Irish horses have behaved in this case, 

 think you ? Two English hunters — more placid than 

 usual, on account of being more or less blown — walked 



