Part 21 (1/2)

”Oh no,” replied Tom, with a rea.s.suring smile. ”He is as quiet and manageable as any man could wish. He does indeed bounce about a little when we burst away at first, and is apt then to get the bit in his teeth; but you've only to keep a tight rein and he'll go all right. His only fault is a habit of tossing his head, which is a little awkward until you get used to it.”

”Yes, I have discovered that fault already,” replied Queeker, as the horse gave a practical ill.u.s.tration of it by tossing his enormous head back until it reached to within an inch of the point of his rider's nose. ”Twice he has just touched my forehead. Had I been bending a little forward I suppose he would have given me an unpleasant blow.”

”Rather,” said Stoutheart junior. ”I knew one poor fellow who was struck in that way by his horse and knocked off insensible. I think he was killed, but don't feel quite sure as to that.”

”He has no other faults, I hope?” asked Queeker.

”None. As for refusing his leaps--he refuses nothing. He carries my father over anything he chooses to run him at, so it's not likely that he'll stick with a light-weight.”

This was so self-evident that Queeker felt a reply to be unnecessary; he rode on, therefore, in silence for a few minutes, comforting himself with the thought that, at all events, he could die!

”I don't intend,” said Queeker, after a few minutes' consideration, ”to attempt to leap everything. I think that would be foolhardy. I must tell you, Mr Stoutheart, before we get to the place of meeting, that I can only ride a very little, and have never attempted to leap a fence of any kind. Indeed I never bestrode a real hunter before. I shall therefore content myself with following the hounds as far as it is safe to do so, and will then give it up.”

Young Stoutheart was a little surprised at the modest and prudent tone of this speech, but he good-naturedly replied--

”Very well, I'll guide you through the gates and gaps. You just follow me, and you shall be all right, and when you've had enough of it, let me know.”

Queeker and his friend were first in the field, but they had not been there many minutes when one and another and another red-coat came cantering over the country, and ere long a large cavalcade a.s.sembled in front of a mansion, the lawn of which formed the rendezvous. There were men of all sorts and sizes, on steeds of all kinds and shapes--little men on big horses, and big men on little horses; men who looked like ”bloated aristocrats” before the bloating process had begun, and men in whom the bloating process was pretty far advanced, but who had no touch of aristocracy to soften it. Men who looked healthy and happy, others who looked reckless and depraved. Some wore red-coats, cords, and tops--others, to the surprise and no small comfort of Queeker, who fancied that _all_ huntsmen wore red coats, were habited in modest tweeds of brown and grey. Many of the horses were sleek, glossy, and fine-limbed, like racers; others were strong-boned and rough. Some few were of gigantic size and rugged aspect, to suit the ma.s.sive men who bestrode them. One of these in particular, a hearty, jovial farmer--and a relative of Tom's--appeared to the admiring Queeker to be big and powerful enough to have charged a whole troop of light dragoons single-handed with some hope of a successful issue. Ladies were there to witness the start, and two of the fair s.e.x appeared ready to join the hunt and follow the hounds, while here and there little boys might be seen bent on trying their metal on the backs of Shetland ponies.

It was a stirring scene of meeting, and chatting, and laughing, and rearing, and curvetting, and fresh air, and suns.h.i.+ne.

Presently the master of the hounds came up with the pack at his heels.

A footman of the mansion supplied all who desired it with a tumbler of beer.

”Have some beer?” said young Stoutheart, pointing to the footman referred to.

”No, thank you,” said Queeker. ”Will you?”

”No. I have quite enough of spirit within me. Don't require artificial stimulant,” said the youth with a laugh. ”Come now--we're off.”

Queeker's heart gave a bound as he observed the master of the hounds ride off at a brisk pace followed by the whole field.

”I won't die yet. It's too soon,” he thought, as he shook the reins and chirped to his steed.

Slapover did not require chirping. He shook his head, executed a mild pirouette on his left hind leg, and made a plunge which threatened first to leave his rider behind, and then to shoot him over his head. Queeker had been taken unawares, but he pressed his knees together, knitted his brows, and resolved not to be so taken again.

Whew! what a rush there was as the two or three hundred excited steeds and enthusiastic riders crossed the lawn, galloped through an open gate, and made towards a piece of rough ground covered with low bushes and bracken, through which the hounds were seen actively running as if in search of something. The bodies of the hounds were almost hidden, and Queeker, whose chief attention was devoted to his horse, had only time to receive the vague impression, as he galloped up, that the place was alive with white and pointed tails.

That first rush scattered Queeker's depression to the winds. What cared he for love, either successful or unrequited, now? Katie was forgotten.

f.a.n.n.y was to him little better than a mere abstraction. He was on a hunter! He was following the hounds! He had heard, or imagined he had heard, something like a horn. He was surprised a little that no one cried out ”Tally-ho!” and in the wild excitement of his feelings thought of venturing on it himself, but the necessity of holding in Slapover with all the power of his arms, fortunately induced him to restrain his ardour.

Soon after he heard a shout of some sort, which he tried to believe was ”Tally-ho!” and the scattered huntsmen, who had been galloping about in all directions, converged into a stream. Following, he knew not and cared not what or whom, he swept round the margin of a little pond, and dashed over a neighbouring field.

From that point Queeker's recollection of events became a train of general confusion, with lucid points at intervals, where incidents of unusual interest or force arrested his attention.

The first of these lucid points was when, at the end of a heavy burst over a ploughed field, he came to what may be styled his first leap.

His hat by that time had threatened so frequently to come off, that he had thrust it desperately down on his head, until the rim behind rested on the back of his neck. Trotting through a gap in a hedge into a road, young Stoutheart sought about for a place by which they might clamber up into the next field without going round by the gate towards which most of the field had headed.

”D'you think you could manage that?” said Tom, pointing with the handle of his whip to a gap in the hedge, where there was a mound and a hollow with a _chevaux-de-frise_ of cut stumps around, and a ma.s.s of thorn branches sufficiently thin to be broken through.