84 THE BEST OF THE FUN 



sat looking leisurely round in their saddles, hounds having 

 flashed over the line. 



Onward they rode again ; and for the next twenty 

 minutes were engaged in getting rapidly from field to 

 field, over what they admitted afterwards to be a suc- 

 cession of narrowbacks of the most trappy description. 

 They seemed all that to me, as I followed on as best I 

 could — too proud to ejaculate aloud, but muttering many 

 a prayerful interjection as I found myself wavering on 

 each crumbling ridge or recovering barely from a second 

 hidden grip. Not even the bliss of ignorance, that 

 allowed me to believe this the ordinary and everyday 

 class of country of the Ward, sufficed to make those 

 complicated fortifications in any degree welcome to my 

 untutored understanding. 



Do you, my Saxon brethren, know what these narrow- 

 backs of theirs are like ? Not all of you do ; so I will tell 

 you in a few words, and without exaggeration. Picture to 

 yourself a chasm in the ground such as you may have 

 seen excavated down a street, when a main sewer is to be 

 laid down in a town. There seems no bottom to it ; and 

 its width is sufticient for a fair water-jump in mild North- 

 amptonshire. Beyond this a grass-grown wall of earth,, 

 that may be five feet in height, or that may be only three. 

 Beyond this, again, a sharp-dug little ditch, placed at the 

 exact distance to catch the fore-legs of a far-jumping horse 

 — in fact, to turn completely on to his back any animal 

 that cannot gather his hind legs to kick back, with the 

 power and instantaneousness of a cat struggling for its- 

 liberty. 



Or take the charming compound the other way. A 

 common or English horse, and a common or Saxon rider,, 

 approaching the little grip, and viewing the green and 

 innocent wall it protects, would probably skim lightly 

 over, to — I daren't finish the picture — say, to make work .; 

 for the wreckers. The Irish horse, on the contrary, 

 perches neatly on the green coping, surveys the prospect 

 for a second, and reveals to your astonished gaze, a black 

 awesome gulf, into which it seems altogether improbable 

 he can help plunging you. He doesn't though ; but with 



