LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK 143 



so never rebels obstinately against a horse's footfall. Thus 

 concussion is minimised ; and horses can go on jumping 

 freely year after year. On the other hand, it is never deep 

 or spongy with wet, the descending rain finding its way 

 rapidly to the water-level, some six feet only below the 

 surface. 



" Surely you don't ride at a iiight of rails like that ? " 

 I inquired, pointing to a first barricade that met my 

 troubled gaze — to wit, a morticed erection of oaken bars, 

 each of them as thick as a man's thigh, and the lot carried 

 considerably higher than an ordinary Leicestershire gate. 

 "Why, yes! That's nothing much. The farmers aim at 

 setting their fences at four feet eight, to keep their stock 

 in." 1 asked no more ; but held my peace while the 

 horrid parallel intruded itself upon my mind, of the con- 

 demned man in the prison-cart catching a first view of the 

 gallows aw^aiting him. But I gazed and gazed, as each 

 successive bone-trap hove in view ; and, you may depend 

 upon it, the longer I looked the less I liked them. And I 

 wondered who would ride the horses at home in Old 

 England.! 



But at the rendezvous were those we were now to 

 ride. For me a tried and proven hunter — a brown 

 gelding, Shipmate by name, up to fully fourteen stone, 

 and with shoulders good enough to allay at least some of 

 the qualms engendered during my recent drive. For my 

 host, Mr. Roby (I shall make no apology for decorating 

 my little tale with the names that belong to it, and that 

 may mark it with its due imprint of veracity) — for him 

 was a neat but powerful thoroughbred, of lesser height, 

 and more often the mount of his sister ; though how Miss 

 Roby (even on Brunette), or how any lady is to be carried 

 in safety day by day over this ghastly country will, I take 

 leave to remark, be a subject of wonderment to me for 

 many a day. 



Scarcely had we mounted than up rode Mr. Frank 

 Griswold with a most useful-looking pack of about seventeen 



• "It is all very well for a man to boast that in all his life he has never been 

 frightened, and believes that he never could be so. There may be men of that nature 

 — I will not dare to deny it ; only I have never known lhem."—Lorna Doo»e. 



