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“Look sharp or you’ll loss him!” now cried old Duffield, as after an ineffectual snatch of the reins by a passing countryman, the horse ducked his head and went kicking and wriggling and frolicking away to the left, regardless of the tempting cry of the hounds.
The pace, of course, was too good for assistance—and our friend and the field were presently far asunder.
Whatever sport the hounds had—and of course they would have a clipper—we can answer for it Mr. Pringle had a capital run; for his horse led him a pretty Will-o’-the-wisp sort of dance, tempting him on and on by stopping to eat whenever his rider—or late rider, rather—seemed inclined to give up the chase, thus deluding him from field to lane and from lane to field until our hero was fairly exhausted.—Many were the rushes and dashes and ventures made at him by hedgers and ditchers and drainers, but he evaded them all by laying back his ears and turning the battery of his heels for the contemplation, as if to give them the choice of a bite or a kick.
At length he turned up the depths of the well-known Love Lane, with its paved trottoir, for the damsels of the adjoining hamlets of East and West Woodhay to come dry-shod to the gossip-shop of the well; and here, dressed in the almost-forgotten blue boddice and red petticoat of former days, stood pretty Nancy Bell, talking matrimonially to Giles Bacon, who had brought his team to a stand-still on the higher ground of the adjoining hedge, on the field above.
Hearing the clatter of hoofs, as the grey tried first the hard and then the soft of the lane, Bacon looked that way; and seeing a loose horse he jumped bodily into the lane, extending his arms and his legs and his eyes and his mouth in a way that was very well calculated to stop even a bolder animal than a horse. He became a perfect barrier. The grey drew up with an indignant snort and a stamp of his foot, and turning short round he trotted back, encountering in due time his agitated and indignant master, who had long been vowing what a trimming he would give him when he caught him. Seeing Billy in a hurry,—for animals are very good judges of mischief, as witness an old cock how he ducks when one picks up a stone,—seeing Billy in a hurry we say, the horse again wheeled about, and returned with more leisurely steps towards his first opponent. Bacon and Nancy were now standing together in the lane; and being more pleasantly occupied than thinking about loose horses, they just stood quietly and let him come towards them, when Giles’s soothing w-ho-o-ays and matter-of-course style beguiled the horse into being caught.
Billy presently came shuffling up, perspiring profusely, with his feet encumbered with mud, and stamping the thick of it off while he answered Bacon’s question as to “hoo it happened,” and so on, in the grumpy sort of way a man does who has lost his horse, he presented him with a shilling, and remounting, rode off, after a very fine run of at least twenty minutes.
The first thing our friend did when he got out of sight of Giles Bacon and Nancy, was to give his horse a good rap over the head with his whip for its impudent stupidity in running away, causing him to duck his head and shake it, as if he had got a pea or a flea in his ear.—He then began wheeling round and round, like a dog wanting to lie down, much to Billy’s alarm, for he didn’t wish for any more nonsense. That performance over, he again began ducking and shaking his head, and then went moodily on, as if indifferent to consequences. Billy wished he mightn’t have hit him so hard.
When he got home, he mentioned the horse’s extraordinary proceedings to the Major, who, being a bit of a vet. and a strong suspector of Sir Moses’ generosity to boot, immediately set it down to the right cause—megrims—and advised Billy to return him forthwith, intimating that Sir Moses was not altogether the thing in the matter of horses; but our friend, who kept the blow with the whip to himself, thought he had better wait a day or two and see if the attack would go off.—In this view he was upheld by Jack Rogers, who thought his old recipe, “leetle drop gin,” would set him all right, and proceeded to administer it to himself accordingly. And the horse improved so much that he soon seemed himself again, whereupon Billy, recollecting Sir Moses’s strenuous injunctions to give him the refusal of him if ever he wanted to part with him, now addressed him the following letter:—
“Yammerton Grange.