AFTER THE BATTLE 171 



Riding home after a good gallop which we have 

 been able to see to our own satisfaction, is not unlike 

 marching back to camp after a successful fight in 

 which we have done our part, and there are many 

 less pleasant things than either of these. Whyte- 

 Melville said that after a good gallop with hounds, 

 he rode home feeling like a man who has done a 

 good action. It is to be hoped that the young 

 soldier may experience this feeling many, many 

 times during his life, but let him not forget that it is 

 not really he who has done the good action, but it is 

 the owners and the occupiers of the land he has 

 been galloping over, and some of the fences of 

 which he has probably broken. Good indeed would 

 it be for " the cause," if all who hunted remem- 

 bered this, and not only remember it, but also act 

 accordingly. 



If this were done universally, we should certainly 

 hear very much less about that curse of hunting in 

 the present day, and maybe the assassinator of it 

 in years to come — wire. There are very few of us 

 who do not like to think that we have done good 

 actions, and thought of, and talked to, in this way, 

 it must be an unusually hard-hearted and thick- 

 headed farmer who cannot be brought into line, and 

 made to regard the bete noir of the devotee of the 

 modern chase from the point of view which touches 

 himself, and which is so deliciously put in the 

 following lines : — 



" Let us argue the point : if the stock get astray, 

 If the pig in a panic sets off for the day, 



