Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/403

 mounting him 'regardless,' and pitting him against the best men with the Quorn, the Pytchley, or wherever the unrivalled English sport in the ancestral isle still holds sway. What nice things a Monte Cristo might do—in that and a few other ways!

The hounds were to throw off on the Warrnambool side of the Moyne, where a broad flat was bounded by farms and the line of sand-dunes, which ran parallel to the sea. A variety of jumping was ensured by this choice of country, the farm fences being of every shade of height, breadth, and solidity. Sound and springy was the turf. If the dingo, when turned down, took the cross country line towards Tower Hill, he was likely to lead us a dance, unless he found refuge in one of the wombat holes with which the ferny slopes, breast high in bracken, abounded.

It must have been ten o'clock or thereabouts when Mr. Lord, arrayed in the well-worn pink, cords, tops, and hunting-cap complete, conducted the spotted beauties across the ford of the Moyne. Within an hour all the Port Fairy world—among which half-a-dozen riding-habits showed that the ladies were not willing to be left out of the excitement—was gathered around. The Australian Reynard, all-ignorant that his imported compeer was, in after-years, to be a prize for scalp-hunters, had been liberated previously, with a due allowance of law, and on a line which involved a reasonable share of fencing. After a preliminary cast or two, the leading hounds hit off the scent, and with a burst of melody which caused more than one of us to anticipate the sensations of Mr. Jorrocks, away went the flower of the horsemen of the western district, riding rather jealous, it must be admitted, but not to be stopped by anything under a six-foot stock-yard fence.

It was a scene to be remembered. The blue sky, the green sward, sound and springy as a cricket-ground, the limitless ocean plain, the long resounding surge, the eager hounds, the medley of horsemen now slightly tailing off, as the pack raced with a breast-high scent towards the volcanic crest of Tower Hill.

Many were the falls, various the fortunes, of those who followed hounds that day. Every man rode as if the honour, firstly, of his station, of the district afterwards, were centred