depend on his
power and his condition. But, presuming your horse to be able to go,
keeping with hounds is not difficult when you are once free from the
thick throng of the riders. And that thick throng soon makes itself
thin. The difficulty is in the start, and you will almost be offended
when I suggest to you what those difficulties are, and suggest also that
such as they are even they may overcome you. You have to choose your
line of riding. Do not let your horse choose it for you instead of
choosing it for yourself. He will probably make such attempts, and it is
not at all improbable that you should let him have his way. Your horse
will be as anxious to go as you are, but his anxiety will carry him
after some other special horse on which he has fixed his eyes. The rider
of that horse may not be the guide that you would select. But some human
guide you must select. Not at first will you, not at first does any man,
choose for himself with serene precision of confident judgment the
line which he will take. You will be flurried, anxious, self-diffident,
conscious of your own ignorance, and desirous of a leader. Many of those
men who are with you will have objects at heart very different from
your object. Some will ride for certain points, thinking that they can
foretell the run of the fox. They may be right; but you, in your new
ambition, are not solicitous to ride away to some other covert because
the fox may, perchance, be going there. Some are thinking of the roads.
Others are remembering that brook which is before them, and riding wide
for a ford. With none such, as I presume, do you wish to place yourself.
Let the hounds be your mark; and if, as may often be the case, you
cannot see them, then see the huntsman; or, if you cannot see him,
follow, at any rate, some one who does. If you can even do this as a
beginner, you will not do badly.

But, whenever it be possible, let the hounds themselves be your mark,
and endeavour to remember that the leading hounds are those which should
guide you. A single hound who turns when he is heading the pack should
teach you to turn also. Of all the hounds you see there in the open,
probably not one-third are hunting. The others are doing as you do,
following where their guides lead them. It is for you to follow the real
guide, and not the followers, if only you can keep the real guide in
view. To keep the whole pack in view and to ride among them is easy
enough when the scent is sl