192 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



glass of port wine, I was by this time longing not to hunt. 

 The hounds and hunt horses had slept at Hillingdon, and 

 my second horseman met me at the station with a de- 

 pressing account of a dull evening, chilly stabling, and 

 languid feeders. It was all very different to the cheer- 

 ful days of yore he remembered. Samways is a man of per- 

 ception, resource, and counsel. A good second horseman, 

 like a good valet, should guess what his master is thinking 

 about, and I saw ' the day's disasters in his morning face ' ; 

 he now declared the fog would never hft, suggested the 

 next train back to Paddington, and that he should ride one 

 of my horses on to the meet and send the hounds home. 



But by this time the two London gentlemen had coaxed 

 their shrouded favourites out of the horse-boxes, and were 

 asking their way to the hotel. Evidently they were all for a 

 ride of some sort. For the matter of that, so was I. The 

 bare mention of Agitator had cheered me up. ' Post equitem 

 sedet atra cura.' This, as Major Whyte Melville has pointed 

 out, is one of the very few mistakes Horace has made. In 

 the shape of an awkward stile downhill, ' cura ' may for 

 a moment be embodied in front of you, but there is no 

 room for him behind really superlative shoulders, and these 

 consolations were waiting for me only a hundred yards 

 away. 



The railway hotel, implacable yellow brick of course, 

 was as little like hunting as the platform. We were looked 

 upon as peculiar animals by an indolent landlord and an 

 incredulous barmaid, Samways in his gold-laced hat being 

 taken, I imagine, for some mounted janissary of the London 

 County Council. However, the cherry brandy — a great 

 incentive to stag-hunting — was pronounced all but up to the 

 Slough sample by my companions. That being the case, 

 there was nothing irretrievably rotten in the state of 

 Denmark. Whilst I was writing a letter — in itself an out- 



