94 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



couple more than we started with. This turns out to be a 

 mistake. We are really a couple short, as Needful was run 

 over by a handsome landau and pair at the meet, and 

 Wellington was badly lamed by a gentleman, supposed to 

 be a captain from Aldershot, at the first fence. Bartlett is 

 being attended to and refreshed in his comfortable quarters. 

 The men's horses look a little tired ; yet liberally ridden 

 throughout, they have stayed. And here, faint but pur- 

 suing, come the second horsemen, who appear to have obeyed 

 their instructions to ' keep following on ' to the letter. As 

 to my own, he turned up with William half an hour ago 

 at a desolate cross-road. How he got there Heaven only 

 knows, for we were by this time clean out of our own coun- 

 try and geography ; but there he was, like manna in the 

 wilderness, waiting for me, with the horse cool, and the 

 stirrups ready altered to my length. William, considering the 

 generous way in which he insisted upon being ridden from 

 Hawthorn Hill to close against Loddon Bridge, still seems 

 as fresh as a daisy. But it is getting late ; the sunset has 

 robed the sky in rose and lilac. And now the distances are 

 fallen asleep, and the foregrounds are getting drowsy. We 

 must be moving. Horses, however tired, hack home cheer- 

 fully with hounds ; so do men. What though there are 

 ten long miles between us and Heading, good stabling, gruel 

 and- linseed, and the welcome the Queen's Hounds can always 

 count upon. Is there not also the nearer and nearer anticipa- 

 tion of the snug coffee-room of the Great Western Hotel, of 

 the change you so prudently sent there, of the loin chop to 

 which you know the head waiter — the best of my acquaint- 

 ance — will give his particular and expert attention ? There 

 is even a reckless, thriftless sort of satisfaction in the calcu- 

 lation that you are short of horses, five-and-twenty miles from 

 the kennels, and a good four more on to that from the hunt 

 stables at Cumberland Lodge. 



