1881—82.] HARD AND FAST. 413 



Chaplin and her pilot, were far nearest the executive in the 

 quick later half of a sterHng, short-turning gallop. 



Going back to Friday, January 6th, when the Quom held a 

 stormy lawTi meet at Quenby Hall, we find a day chiefly 

 noticeable for wild wind and its eccentric eff'ects. One fox 

 ran into the midst of hounds in Botany Bay and stood and 

 snarled at his unexpected foes ; another, put up in the oj^en, 

 fairly charged the pack and the whole body of horsemen, to his 

 own destruction. Everyone got thoroughly drenched in a five- 

 minutes' waterspout before hounds were j)ut into covert ; but 

 this was not nearly enough for the ardour of two smart Mel- 

 tonians, who, in a brief quick circle from the Coplow, followed 

 it up with a header into a pond twelve feet deep ! A strong 

 palisade stood on the jumping side ; the driving wind pre- 

 vented their seeing further ; so, with both spurs in, they went 

 for the pond — though the water was green and cold, and not 

 over clean. The clever part of the feat lay with the earlier 

 victim ; who rescued himself, his horse, and his hat, in time 

 to be sailing away in the distance, as Jack o' Lantern to his 

 successor. But a man who has graduated through a shop 

 window with no worse results than a bill for glass and pipe- 

 stems, can afford to play at fish torpedo ; and, after the first 

 half-choked explosion, to treat the feat as a merry jest. 

 Cautious friends, peering over the timber, were much exercised 

 at the length of time one of the performers was able to remain 

 under water. But beyond their sympathetic anxiety at the 

 moment, and the revulsion of feeling which moved them to 

 hysteric laughter immediately afterwards, nothing really serious 

 came of the catastrophe. It was not a good day's sport. How 

 could it be under a half- hurricane ? But twenty minutes' 

 grass gallopmg from Barkby Holt (to lose at Quenby) brought 

 warmth and consolation in the afternoon. 



