“i hope you feel your arm a little easier, sir, this evening?” says miss lushington, reappearing in her own peculiar department, fresh and blooming from the revision of her toilet, which usually takes place about seven p.m. miss lushington’s habits are peculiarly regular and methodical; her attractions of a dazzling, not to say gaudy, description; she is a thorough woman of business, if indeed such a designation be not a contradiction in terms; but when she does take a day’s pleasure, there are few ladies who can produce a more satisfactory effect than miss l.

i raise my eyes to reply with becoming gratitude. the object on which they rest is no everyday sight—a full-bodied, fresh-coloured, buxom damsel, with shining hair dark and lustrous as ebony, suggestive of no small expenditure in pomatum; a pair of light-grey eyes, restless and vivacious, called black by courtesy, because fringed with lashes of jet, and surmounted by arching eyebrows of the same colour, swarthy and strong of growth: a straight well-cut nose; a wide mouth, with red lips and white teeth, large, regular, and wholesome; not forgetting those captivating manners which spring from habitual good-humour and perfect self-possession in mixed society, backed by a pair of ear-rings that would have looked rich even on the queen of sheba. all this i take in at a glance for the twentieth time, and catch myself confessing, also for the twentieth time, that the barmaid of the haycock hotel and posting-house, soakington, is the most fascinating, as doubtless she is the most fastidious of her sex.

miss lushington, i need hardly observe, is no longer young. barmaids of tender years, albeit extremely attractive to the usual frequenters of the snug locality over which they preside, cannot be expected to possess the aplomb with which mature experience and the rejection of many offers invest the lady of more autumnal charms. they are apt to be a little flurried by the attentions of the military, and somewhat over-excited by their anxiety for the commercial interest; also prone, if good-looking, to fly away and better themselves matrimonially and otherwise. but miss l. is far above all such weaknesses as these. not a red-coat in the whole british army could raise a corresponding hue in her cheek by the most ardent avowal of devotion; nay, even a cornet of hussars (and i take an officer of that rank and service to be more at his ease in female society than other children of men) has been known to retire abashed and worsted from a little match at quiet persiflage with miss lushington. as for the commercial gents! why, though they worship the very keys she jingles, and the lemons in the nets above her head, they would no more think of proposing to her than to the mother of the gracchi. i have often wondered what miss lushington’s early history can have been. was she ever a little girl with long tails and frills above her ankles, swinging a slate to a day-school? had she a mother, who washed her face, and scolded her, and taught her to sew, and eventually launched her on the boards of a minor theatre; for surely those majestic manners must have been acquired before the foot-lights? was there ever a time that she came home wearied and saddened, pressing some girlish treasure to her heart, with a thrill, half joy, half pain, and looking along an endless vista in the future, containing a house, a garden, a pig, some rosy children, a couple of bee-hives, and a fresh-coloured young man at his tea. was she ever young? or did she descend from her attic some fine summer’s day, this perfect and finished creature of for—well! of between thirty and forty, just as minerva sprang ready-armed from the brain of jove, or venus wet and glowing, with nothing on but her shells, emerged from the blushing sea? i incline to the latter supposition. i believe that caroline lushington (of course, with that colour on her cheek, her name is sure to be caroline; besides, i saw it on her workbox)—i say i believe that caroline lushington never was the least different from what she is now, and that i should always have been as much afraid of her as i am at this present moment. i am a shy man—not too shy to confess it. i blush to the lobes of my ears, in replying to her kind inquiries; but miss l. does not laugh at me; for, woman-like, she has a prejudice in favour of shy men, and she pities my infirmities, and my arm in a black leather sling.

“your tea will have drawn in five minutes, sir, and your toast is down at the fire now,” says she, patting and smoothing the cushions of her own particular arm-chair in her own particular corner, that i may sit at ease despite my injuries. how kind, how thoughtful she is! and heavens! what a torso the woman has! though her dressmaker lives over the saddler’s, in the high street, at waterborough, that black satin fits as if it came direct from paris. even now, mixing a glass of brandy-and-water for a customer, the turn of her waist and the cling of her corset would drive an artist into ecstasies. i am no artist, yet i cannot but think of alfred de musset’s song about his andalusian marquesa, of which, as the language and the sentiments are both french, i need not write them down here.

whilst the customer drinks and pays for his glass of brandy-and-water, it is high time that i should explain how i came to be domiciled in the bar of the haycock hotel and posting-house, soakington, with a contused shoulder, a broken collar-bone, and a black eye.

since my earliest boyhood i have been enthusiastically fond of hunting. i am not a skilful horseman; i never was what is called a fine rider, perhaps not a forward one, though i have tried hard to think so; nor am i one of those who know about hunting (by the way, i have often wondered what it is they do know), but in ardent affection for the pursuit i yield to none. my godfather, one of the old holderness lot, and not the worst of those hard-riding east-riding undeniables, used to say of me, “the lad has a loose seat, and heavy hands, and not an over-quick eye, but his heart is in it. that’s what gives me hopes of him—his heart is in it!” and my godfather was right; my heart was in it. as a boy at school, i kept a few beagles, and ran with them on foot, imitating, as far as a biped can, the actions and motions of a horse. at oxford, i was a regular attendant on the far-famed drag, and to this day can remember vividly the merits of a certain game little chestnut called jumping jemmy, whom i used to ride unmercifully at a pecuniary consideration which must have cost me less than a shilling a leap. j. j. could jump like a cat, and had carried too many of us ever to allow an undergraduate to throw him down. that i never took my degree is the less to be wondered at, when i remember my favourite course of literature, in which, unfortunately, the examiner never thought of gauging my proficiency. i could have taken a “double-first” in all poor nimrod’s works, and could have repeated a page or two right on end from any part of the famous run in the “quarterly,” knowing the exact places in which lord gardner said, “a fig for the whissendine!” and lord brudenel heard a cracking of rails behind him, and could not identify the man in the ditch because “the pace was too good to inquire!”

so they plucked me; but i persevered in my course of study notwithstanding. do i not know and love jorrocks? if i could find out soapy sponge in the flesh, would i not ask him to come and stay with me, and feed him and mount him, and let him smoke as much as he liked in his bedroom? nay, i think i would even have bought the piebald pony of him as a cover hack; for to ride either sir ’ercles or multum-in-parvo would have been beyond my highest aspirations. nay, with all his absurdities and affectations, i have a sneaking kindness for the dismounted sportsman in “ask mamma” who hung his wet towel out at window on doubtful nights, though he had not a horse to his name, and was no more likely to go out hunting than if he had been bed-ridden. yes, i like the whole thing—the hounds, the horses, the servants, the second-horse men, the splashes on my top-boots, the golden drops on the gorse covert, and the wreath of cigar-smoke curling upward into the mild soft air.

people talk about hunting going out; being on its last legs; civilised away before the advance of railroads, the march of intellect, &c. all this is sheer nonsense. there are more men hunt to-day than hunted twenty years ago, twice as many as hunted thirty, and probably ten times as many as hunted fifty years ago. hounds run harder than they did in the time of our fathers; horses are better bred, better kept, better bridled, and better ridden. the country is also more enclosed, and there is consequently a deal more jumping, and more occasion for skill and quickness, than when high leicestershire was an open upland, and naseby field an unfenced marsh. the best of the old ones could not have gone “a cracker” in higher form than the dozen or so of men who may be seen any morning in the week with any of our crack packs of hounds in a quick thing; and in the “days of old meynell” there was a good deal more room for those who liked to try. it really is by no means an easy matter to thread a crowd of a hundred horsemen in a narrow lane, all going racing pace, and then to jockey the best ten or a dozen of these for the easiest place in the first fence. the actual feat of keeping near hounds when they run hard requires skill and quickness; but the difficulty is much enhanced when it has to be performed by a score of men where there is only comfortable space for five. it is a pleasant sensation, too, when the first impediment has been disposed of, and a man feels what the fast ones of the present day call “landed,” to sail away with the hounds, always supposing he is riding a hunter, and to feel that he will not now be interfered with till they check, but can do his own places at his own pace, without pulling his horse out of his stride, and gain all the advantages of seeing the hounds turn, while he has all the pleasure of watching them as they shoot across the fields, in swift, streaming line.

great artists, indeed, boast that under such favourable circumstances, they can distinguish and criticise the performances of each individual of the pack: but for myself i confess that i never had either coolness or leisure for such details. by the time i have marked the best place in the next fence, chosen the soundest ridge, or the wettest furrow, by which to get there, given my hat a firm push down on my head, and arranged my four reins, which are apt to get confused together and entangled with the thong of my hunting-whip, in the manner i am accustomed to hold them, i have small attention to spare for anything else; and i have always been of opinion that the cheering to particular hounds in a rapid burst, from huntsmen and other professionals striving hopelessly to catch them, is the offspring of a vivid imagination, and a happy audacity in guess-work.

this forward riding, however, to a man who means to ride at all, is decidedly the best method of crossing a country, both on the considerations of pleasure and profit. horses take their leaps in a more collected form when they see none of their own species in front of them; the hounds create quite excitement enough in a hunter to make him do his utmost; while the emulation he conceives of his own kind is apt to degenerate into a jealousy, that makes him foolhardy and careless. also a great amount of unnecessary exertion is entailed upon him, by being pulled off and set going again, which must be done repeatedly in a run by a man who follows another, however straight and well his leader may ride. also, the sportsman’s nerves are spared much needless anxiety and misgiving. can anything be more distressing than to see our front-rank man fall, in the uncertainty he has attained on the further side of a thick fence, or cover it with an obvious effort and struggle? caution whispers, we had better decline. shame urges that “what one horse can do another can.” self-esteem implores us not to fall back into “the ruck” behind. so we first of all check our horse from hesitation, and then hurry him from nervousness. the probable result is a “cropper,” with the additional disgrace of having been incurred at a place which the pioneer cleared easily, and an assumption, as unjust as it is unwelcome, that our horse is not so good as his. now, in riding for himself a man preserves his confidence till he is in the air. should he be luckless enough to light in a chasm, he has at least the advantage of not being frightened to death in advance; and i am convinced that all the extraordinary leaps on record have thus been made by these forward horsemen, who, trusting dame fortune implicitly, find that she nearly always pulls them through. with regard to the distance a horse can cover when going a fair pace and leaping from sound ground, even with thirteen or fourteen stone on his back, it is scarcely credible to those who have not witnessed it. two- and three-and-thirty feet from footmark to footmark and on a dead level have often been measured off. there are few fences in any country that would let us in, if we could trust to such a bound as this; and the activity displayed by a good horse, when he finds the ditch on the landing side wider than he calculated, is perhaps the noblest effort of the bodily powers of the animal.[2]

2. in the black forest in germany there are two stones standing to this day, sixty feet apart, to commemorate the leap made across a chasm by a hunted deer, attested by several sportsmen who were eye-witnesses of the wonderful and desperate effort.

of course, we must fall sometimes. of course, without that little spice of what we can hardly call danger, but which produces what we may safely call funk, it wouldn’t be half the fan it is. going down, indeed! look at the column of advertisements, weather permitting, in the times; look at the price of hay and corn; look at the collector’s accounts of assessed taxes for saddle-horses (if you can get them); look at poole’s trade in coats, and anderson’s in breeches, and peel’s (not sir robert’s) in boots. why, the very shoemakers, though on foot, hunt regularly. so do the tradesmen and the farmers, and all the liberal professions; the army, the navy, the house of commons, the peers of the realm, her majesty’s ministers, and the principal commissioner of the court of bankruptcy; nay, the heir to the crown is an enthusiastic sportsman, and an excellent rider; and so floreat diana! and god save the queen!

talking of falls brings me back to my broken collar-bone, and the bar of the haycock. i must explain, then, how i came to be established as the habitual inhabitant of that snuggery.

after so wet a summer as that of 1860, i confess i was sanguine as to an open winter: i have always supported the doctrine of compensation. if we don’t get it in one way, we do in another. a deal of warmth was doubtless due on the year, and what was more natural than to anticipate an open season, and plenty of sport? with this conviction, i kept my eyes open all the summer, and raising my modest stud from the complement of three to five, was fortunate enough to purchase at tattersall’s two raw-boned, roman-nosed animals, called respectively “apple-jack” and “tipple cider,” who turned out to be sound, useful, and well-trained hunters. lest i should delude the unwary into thinking it a good plan thus to put one’s hand into “the lucky-bag,” let me observe, that i paid the full value for them, and esteem myself unusually fortunate not to have been “stuck,” or, in plain english, cheated out of good money for a bad horse.

i then sent my stud down to the stables i had taken for them at soakington, under the care of a steady old groom, who is as sagacious as he is obstinate, and engaging for myself the large parlour and the little blue bedroom at the haycock, prepared for a comfortable five months’ spell at hunting and nothing else. no society to distract me; no books that i couldn’t go to sleep over, if i was tired; above all, no female influence to make one late in the mornings, restless in the day-time, and sleepless at night—an effect i have remarked as the usual consequence of a quiet bachelor suffering himself to be deluded into the company of that insidious creature, woman.

“beautiful she is,

the serpent’s voice less subtle than her kiss,

the snake but vanquished dust; and she will draw

another host from heaven, to break heaven’s law.”

i did not then know of miss lushington’s presidency at the board of control. i had not even pictured to myself the possibility of such a siren in such a collection of satins, more innocent than ulysses—who, i am convinced, was a finished profligate from the first, and only went to troy to get away from penelope—i did not even mistrust the cup of circe. ah! she made a pig of her admirer, that ancient enchantress; and in miss lushington’s presence the admirer makes an ass of himself: that is all the difference. but i anticipate.

soakington is a delightful situation for hunting; though perhaps for other purposes the extremely wet nature of the soil and dampness of the atmosphere might make it a less desirable locality. the village consists of a few buildings, of which the haycock with its stables and out-houses forms far the largest part: there are half-a-dozen straggling cottages, a dilapidated barn, always open and always empty; a pair of stocks with no foot-hold, and a pound; the church is three-quarters-of-a-mile off, and it always rains on a sunday, except when it snows.

but the surrounding district for many miles would gladden a sportsman’s heart. there are large wild pastures, all overgrown with rushes, and not half-drained, that cannot fail to carry a scent; the arable land is badly cultivated, and badly cared for; boys never combine the scaring of crows and heading of foxes in this favoured region, and when you do see a plough, it is generally lying stranded in an unfinished furrow, deserted by man and horse. large woods, with deep clay ridings, holding no end of foxes, lie at intervening distances from each other, to afford a succession of famous gallops, and a certainty of hounds being left to work for themselves. ay, and in the month of may, when the primroses are out, and the violets scenting the air, and other hounds have left off for the season, you may still follow up the chase, in these deep dark glades, with an ardour proportioned to the heat of the sun over your head. large straggling ill-conditioned fences are the obstacles with which the hunter has to contend; and nothing but a good horse, with discretion as well as courage, is likely to see a run in safety; whilst for the latter quality there is no lack of occasion, inasmuch as the sludge, a deep, wide, and treacherous brook, winds and doubles through the whole country, where it is least expected, and obtrudes itself in the most unwelcome manner, as one of the principal features, in every run that takes place. i have said enough to show that soakington is no bad billet for a man who means to devote himself to the sport; and when i add that the field is usually small in number, consisting principally of hard-riding farmers, and the lords of the soil, whilst the hounds themselves are of the best blood in england, and established in the same kennels for half a century, it is no wonder that i looked forward to my season’s amusement with considerable anticipations of delight.

i pass over my first fortnight’s doings. it takes at least that period at the beginning of the season for a man to renew his familiarity with his old horses, and make acquaintance with his new ones. i have always envied the nerve and address of those who can jump on a strange hunter’s back at a moment’s notice, twist and turn him at will in any direction, and lark him over every description of fence, with a confidence as surprising as it is usually successful. this is a gift, however, that i do not myself enjoy. it takes me a week at least to feel really at home in boots and breeches; nor, until i have ridden each of my horses twice in his turn, do i consider that he is fit to go, or that i have acquired thorough confidence in his abilities. by the third week in november, when the ditches are beginning to get clear of tangled grass, and it is possible to see through a fence, that you cannot see over, i consider myself fairly embarked on the sport.

there were but three days without rain, to the best of my recollection, during the whole of the above-named month, in the year of grace 1860. behold me, then, congratulating myself on the prospect of at last reaching the covert-side without being wet through, as i mounted my horse at the door of the haycock, and caught a glimpse of miss lushington’s black head above the window-blinds, not wholly uninterested in my departure. the fixture was at claybridge, less than three miles from soakington; and as the famous pack to which i almost exclusively confine my attentions meets at half-past ten, i had ample time to breakfast comfortably, and ride my hunter on.

although not sufficiently spartan in my habits to do without a covert-hack for long distances, i have found out, in common with most men, i believe, that one’s horse never carries one so pleasantly as when one has ridden him to covert oneself. apple-jack is a calm and deliberate animal enough, with none of the crotchets and fancies peculiar to so many superior hunters; and yet even he seems always a little less staid and careful than usual when he has carried my groom a dozen miles or so along the road. few sensations are more enjoyable than to jog quietly to the meet, after a leisurely breakfast, with a good cigar in one’s mouth, a horse that feels like a hunter under one, and the satisfactory conviction that one is in plenty of time.

it is not my province nor my intention to describe minutely the castle-cropper hounds. all the world knows that the earl of castle-cropper is a thorough sportsman; that you might hunt with him from year’s end to year’s end, and, except to beg you civilly to “hold hard,” never hear him open his lips; and that he is supposed to be as facetious and agreeable in private life as he is reserved and silent in his public capacity. the same world knows, too, that will hawk, who was with his father, the old earl, in the famous days of musters and tom smith, a sort of heroic period “ante agamemnona” is the prince of huntsmen, and the flower of veterans; that the horses are undeniable, the servants respectable, well dressed, and trustworthy, though scarcely so quick as they might be; the whole thing goes like clockwork, and the hounds are beyond all praise. well they may be; they have had that advantage which is so indispensable to the perfection of a pack, and, in these days of change, so often denied it, viz., time. in the best part of a century, a uniform height, an equal excellence, and a family likeness are to be attained, with constant perseverance and unlimited expense. from generation to generation the earls of castle-cropper have devoted their leisure, their money, and their attention, to this favourite hobby. the present successor may well be satisfied with the result.

they are rather large, solemn-looking hounds, extremely rich in colour; the dark and tan, both in dogs and bitches, predominating. they have a strong family likeness in the depth of their girth, the width of their loins, and the quality of the timber on which they stand. you might seek through the kennels at the castle for a summer’s day without finding a pair of legs that were not as straight and square as a dray-horse’s, with feet as round as a cat’s. in hunting they run well together, without flashing to the front; and although other hounds may seem to make their way quicker across a field, the castle-croppers keep continuously on, over a country, seldom hovering, as it is called, for a moment, and carrying the scent with them, as it were, in defiance of all obstacles. old hawk assists them but little, and holloas to them not at all. these hounds are never seen with ears erect and heads up, waiting for information. if they want to know where their fox is gone, they put their noses down, and find out for themselves. also, they come home with their sterns waving over their backs; and finally, i cannot describe their uniformity of appearance and general strength and efficiency better than by saying, that the bitches are so like the dogs, you can hardly tell the one pack from the other, but by the shriller music of its tones.

a dozen sportsmen, including the master, constituted our field at claybridge. there were half-a-dozen red-coats, one belonging to an undergraduate, on for the first time; two or three farmers; a horse-breaker, who kept at a most respectful distance from the pack, and a nondescript. the latter might have been anything you please. i believe he was a grocer. he wore a pair of low shoes, a grey frieze shooting-jacket, a black satin waistcoat, and a hunting-cap! his horse, a mealy bay, had a long coat, a long tail, a long pedigree, and long legs. the man rode with one spur, an ash stick, and a snaffle bridle. nevertheless, i saw him jump a locked gate just after they found, with considerable address and determination.

although i arrived at half-past ten to a minute, ere i could look about me, a nod from the silent earl motioned will hawk to begin. eagerly, yet under perfect control, twenty couple of dog-hounds dashed into a wood of some seventy or eighty acres, the noble master and his huntsman accompanying them down a ride, that seemed to take them up to their girths at every stride. the first whip galloped off in another direction without a word; and the second, before plunging into the obscurity of the forest, posted the small and obedient field in a corner by a hand-gate, from which we were forbidden to stir upon any provocation whatsoever.

though you often wait several anxious minutes by the side of a patch of gorse the size of a flower-garden, in these large woods, you almost always find instantaneously; and we had not occupied our station for many seconds ere the note of a hound brought our hearts into our mouths. another and another certified the truth of the declaration, and presently a grand crash and peal of deep-mouthed music proclaimed that there was a capital scent. twice they forced their fox to the very gate at which we were standing. twice huntsmen and master came splashing and floundering up the deep ride, to go away with them; but the third time the fox made his point good, as these game woodland gentlemen will, and whisking his brush gallantly, put his head straight for the open within twenty yards of us.

i had just turned to holloa; nay, was opening my mouth for the purpose, when a low, quiet voice in my ear whispered, “don’t make a noise;” and the earl was close to me. how he got there i never knew; but he seemed to have an instinctive perception of my intention, and a morbid fear lest i should “get their heads up.”

in another moment the music, increasing in volume, reached the edge of the wood, and then the whole pack (not one missing, for i heard the earl say so to the second whip) came pouring out over the fence, and proceeded to run in a steady, business-like stream over the adjacent field.

“give them a moment!” said the master; and away he went alongside of them—best pace.

there was none of the usual hurry and confusion that may be witnessed in most fields, when a fox goes away. the red-coats dropped at once into their places, the undergraduate taking the lead gallantly, in a line of his own. the farmers caught hold of their horses, and proceeded as if they meant business. the nondescript charged the gate i have mentioned, in preference to a straggling hedge with an awkward bank, and seemed determined to see all the fun while he could; and i followed his lordship hoping to take advantage of his experience, although contrary to my usual principle. it was only the third time i had ridden apple-jack, and i had not yet acquired thorough confidence in my horse. alas! my amusement was doomed to meet with an early termination. the first fence i negotiated most successfully; the second i avoided by making use of a friendly gate; the third landed me in a rushy pasture, over which the hounds were streaming, and whence i obtained an extensive view of the surrounding country, and the line we were likely to run. a black belt of wood crowned the horizon, and towards it the fox was obviously pointing. in the interval lay a fair, flat country—green and pastoral; but a foot-bridge, a quarter of a mile to the right, and a stunted willow or two in the next field, denoted the vicinity of the omnipresent sludge. i dreaded it even then. but i might have spared myself my apprehensions. before i arrived at it, a low hedge and ditch were to be crossed, which i saw his lordship accomplish with ease, and rode at myself in perfect confidence. apple-jack did it beautifully. alas! he landed in a covered drain (i believe the only one in the country), and i remember nothing more, except a confused sensation of jolting in a post-chaise, till i felt the doctor’s finger on my pulse, as i lay on my back in my own bed at the haycock.