Page:Old Melbourne Memories.djvu/204

 ranked, the blows come shrewder and more difficult of parry. More than once has the knight been, by trusty squire or faithful friend,

We were ever and anon minded to answer in the affirmative to the "rendez vous!" of Fate so persistently repeated. Yet will we forward still, parrying lance-thrust here, fending sword-play there. Many a trusty comrade is down; we miss the cheery tones of a voice that sounded never far from our right arm, in feast or in foray. Yet still en avant seems more natural than halt or retreat.

Ye gods! what a spring morning was that on which we hurled ourselves out of bed at Woodlands, with the full, absorbing, wildly-exciting knowledge, even in that first moment of consciousness, that The Steeplechase was to be run that day—an Olympic game in which we were to share. A truly classic conflict in which the competitors were mostly men of mark, where the spectators were friends, relatives, and sympathisers, and where divine personages in the shape of various ladies of the period, lovely and beloved, were to gaze upon our prowess, thrill at our daring, and "weep when a warrior nobly falls."

We had a warrior, Colonel Acland Anderson—poor fellow; we had four squatters, Molesworth and Rawdon Greene, Edmund M'Neill, and "the duffer who writes this" reminiscence. Last, not least, we had a Chief-Justice in posse. He wasn't Sir William in those days, only a hard-riding, hardworking, manifestly rising barrister, perhaps not inaptly