the road. Boxall Springs is only a quarter of a mile
before him, but he wonders how the farmer has come to know all about it.
But on reaching Boxall Springs he finds that the farmer was right, and
that Tom is already breaking up the fox. "Very good thing, Mr. Jones,"
says the squire in good humour. Our friend mutters something between his
teeth and rides away in dudgeon from the triumphant master. On his road
home he hears all about it from everybody. It seems to him that he alone
of all those who are anybody has missed the run, the run of the season!
"And killed him in the open as you may say," says Smith, who has already
twice boasted in Jones's hearing that he had seen every turn the hounds
had made. "It wasn't in the open," says Jones, reduced in his anger to
diminish as far as may be the triumph of his rival.

Such is the fate, the too frequent fate of the man who hunts and does
like it.

THE LADY WHO RIDES TO HOUNDS.

Among those who hunt there are two classes of hunting people who always
like it, and these people are hunting parsons and hunting ladies. That
it should be so is natural enough. In the life and habits of parsons
and ladies there is much that is antagonistic to hunting, and they who
suppress this antagonism do so because they are Nimrods at heart.
But the riding of these horsemen under difficulties, horsemen and
horsewomen, leaves a strong impression on the casual observer of
hunting; for to such an one it seems that the hardest riding is
forthcoming exactly where no hard riding should be expected. On the
present occasion I will, if you please, confine myself to the lady who
rides to hounds, and will begin with an assertion, which will not
be contradicted, that the number of such ladies is very much on the
increase.

Women who ride, as a rule, ride better than men. They, the women, have
always been instructed; whereas men have usually come to ride without
any instruction. They are put upon ponies when they are all boys, and
put themselves upon their fathers' horses as they become hobbledehoys:
and thus they obtain the power of sticking on to the animal while
he gallops and jumps, and even while he kicks and shies; and, so
progressing, they achieve an amount of horsemanship which answers
the purposes of life. But they do not acquire the art of riding with
exactness, as women do, and rarely have such hands as a woman has on
a horse's mouth. The consequence of this is that women fall less often