TRIFLES 331 



24). Wilson blew the body of the pack to him on the 

 lower side towards Eydon, the direction of more than one 

 good run of late months, but after a first field or so hounds 

 seemed almost powerless. One couple and a half had 

 crept on as far as the brook, and here their comrades 

 joined them, while we rode up to find an unpleasing 

 chasm across our path, yet no pace nor ardour to promote 

 adventure. That some slight adventure did accrue I am 

 in a position personally to testify. Not a mishap begotten 

 of recklessness, but rather such as might befall a jolly 

 farmer of the fens returning through his labyrinth of 

 dykes after a healthy market, or as recently overtook 

 another of us in the farmyard of Braunston Cleaves. At 

 any rate, as is only fair, your recorder this time furnished 

 the laugh himself ; and so, when hounds came altogether 

 to a standstill at Eydon, the wind blowing cold and a 

 sleet storm passing, he concluded to convey his uncomeli- 

 ness homeward, satisfied with having enacted his part in 

 the entertainment of the day. By the way, there was a 

 grim consolation in the thought — flashing through the 

 mind — as a big-hoofed horse trod him below the mud, 

 and the dirty water forced its way down his unwilling 

 throat. " Wonder if the Braunston Brook tasted last 

 week half as nasty as this ! " Another point, he tells me, 

 came home to him this evening still more acutely. You 

 remember the Immortal One's soliloquy : " Blessed if I 

 ain't got a fi'-pound note in my pocket, and it'll be utterly 

 ruined ! " Fi'-pound notes happen to grow very sparsely 

 upon your correspondent's tree of life ; and such as may 

 now and again appear are plucked far too greedily by 

 watchful blackbirds to admit of their ever running such 

 risks of solution by flood or field. But by some luckless 

 chance this morning's post had brought him five shillings' 

 worth of postage stamps, change out of a cheque. These 

 now present the appearance of chewed paper, and I am 

 authorised to offer them at less than half price to any 

 enthusiastic speculator whose sympathies may prompt him 

 to redeem them in the interests of sport. 



Were I to find myself at anytime prompted to " tread 

 on the tails " of a coat, I do not think that I should have 



