17G EACECOUESE AND COVERT SIDE. 



We soon disposed of breakfast, and after 

 getting into a dogcart, an hour's travelling 

 brought us to the scene of action, where we 

 dismounted and started off to walk over the 

 ground, which was marked out by white flags 

 stuck in the hedges. 



" Good hunting fences, they seem," Packen- 

 ham said, as we scrambled through a huge bush 

 which it seemed impossible to me that any man 

 could go at and live to tell the tale, supposing 

 his horse were weak-minded enough to try it. 

 " That's all right ! This is rather nasty — awk- 

 w^ard drop — don't you think so ? " he asked me 

 as we came to a large timber barricade. 



I repHed that I did not suppose a foot or so 

 more or less made much difference in the long 

 run. 



" Not to you, perhaps," he said. 



And I agreed with him ; for beyond a probable 

 intensification of the chilly feeling, which always 

 runs down my back when I see people doing 

 anything exceptionally rash, I was not par- 

 ticularly interested. I only knew that I would 

 cheerfully have settled down and dreamed away 

 existence in the meadow where we stood, if 

 there had been no other way of making an exit 

 than jumping those posts and rails. The way 

 in which one becomes habituated to strange 



