short, of course; the pack got on the
slot of a roebuck too, and were off the boar's scent in a little while,
running wild. Altogether we got scattered, and in the forest it grew
almost as dark as pitch; you followed just as you could, and could
only guide yourself by your ear when the hounds gave cry, or the horns
sounded. On you blundered, hit or miss, headlong down the rocks and
through the branches; horses warmed wonderfully to the business,
scrambled like cats, slid down like otters, kept their footing where
nobody'd have thought anything but a goat could stand. Our hunting
bloods wouldn't live an hour in a French forest. You see we just look
for pace and strength in the shoulders; we don't much want anything
else--except good jumping power. What a lot of fellows--even in the
crack packs--will always funk water! Horses will fly, but they can't
swim. Now, to my fancy, a clever beast ought to take even a swelling bit
of water like a duck. How poor Standard breasted rivers till that fool
staked him!"

He dropped more walnuts into his wine, wistfully recalling a mighty hero
of Leicestershire fame, that had given him many a magnificent day out,
and had been the idol of his stables, till in his twelfth year the noble
old sorrel had been killed by a groom's recklessness; recklessness
that met with such chastisement as told how and why the hill-tribes'
sobriquet had been given to the hand that would lie so long in indolent
rest, to strike with such fearful force when once raised.

"Well," he went on once more, "we were all of us scattered; scarcely two
kept together anywhere; where the pack was, where the boar was, where
the huntsmen were, nobody knew. Now and then I heard the hounds giving
tongue at the distance, and I rode after that to the best of my science;
and uncommonly bad was the best. That forest work perplexes one, after
the grass-country. You can't view the beauties two minutes together; and
as for sinning by overriding 'em, you're very safe not to do that! At
last I heard a crashing sound, loud and furious; I thought they had got
him to bay at last. There was a great oak thicket as hard as iron, and
as close as a net, between me and the place; the boughs were all twisted
together, God knows how, and grew so low down that the naked branches
had to be broken though at every step by the horse's fore hoofs, before
he could force a step. We did force it somehow at last, and came into
a green, open space, where th