Ernest Bracebridge: School Days

by William Henry Giles Kingston

Note it, all you who may have to do hare. Get the wind in your face as much as possible during your outward course, in cold as well as in hot weather, but more especially in hot. In cold weather, however, it is important, as you will, if you have the wind behind you when going, get very hot, and you will be apt to get chilled when leisurely returning, or be prevented, from fear of it, of sitting down and resting. Not that such an idea of catching cold ever entered into the imagination of the two schoolboys. Along the ridges of the smooth downs they went merrily, gazing down into the valley below, and more than once looking round to discover if the hounds were following. Nowhere were they to be seen.

The foot of Fairway Tower was reached at last. It was the keep of a castle of very ancient date, built in the centre of a Roman encampment. The walls were of enormous thickness, allowing a staircase to wind up within them.

“Let us give them a good view of the sea,” cried Ernest. Up the well-worn stone steps they mounted. Up—up they sprung, laughing merrily and cheering loudly when they reached the top. Few people, after a run of nearly fifteen miles, would have liked to have followed their example. The view, Ernest declared, repaid them. It was expansive, and it gave, from its character, a pleasing, exhilarating sensation to the heart as it lay at their feet basking in sunshine. On either hand were the smiling undulating downs, dotted here and there with flocks of sheep. Before them the country sloped away for a couple of miles till it reached the bright blue dancing ocean, over which several white sails were skimming rapidly. Inland there was a beautifully diversified country. There were several rich woods surrounding gentlemen’s seats, and here and there a hamlet and a church spire rising up among the trees, and some extensive homesteads, the gems of an English rural landscape; and there were wide pasture lands, and ploughed fields already getting a green tinge from the rising corn, and many orchards blushing with pink bloom, and white little cottages, and the winding river, and many a silvery stream which ran murmuring into it; but I need not go on with the description. Ernest and Buttar drank in its beauties as they did the cool breeze which blew on their cheeks, and then they looked round to try and discover the hounds.

“I see them,” exclaimed Buttar, after a long scrutinising search. “There they are, just coming out of Beechwood; they look no bigger than a troop of ants. Well, we have got a fine start of them—let us give them a cheer. They won’t hear us, but they may possibly see us.” Ernest agreeing to Buttar’s proposal, they got to the top of the highest pinnacle, and taking off their hats they waved them vehemently above their heads, shouting at the same time to their hearts’ content at the top of their voices, Hurra, hurra, hurra; once more, hurra! They did not expect, however, that the sound could possibly reach their friends, so they shouted, it must be owned, for their own satisfaction and amusement. Having shouted and waved their hats till they were tired, they agreed that it should be time to commence their homeward way. They accordingly prepared to descend from their lofty perch to the world below. They did not go down by the staircase, but by the rugged projections in the wall, where a wide breach existed, made either by the hand of time or by Cromwell’s cannons in the times of the Cavaliers and Roundheads. They laughed very much as they stuck bits of paper into the crevices in the walls, and scattered them on every spot where there was a chance of their remaining. They were not long in reaching the bottom, for they were fearless climbers, and made little of dropping down ten feet or so to a ledge below them, provided they felt sure that they could balance themselves when there, and not go head foremost lower still, as careless climbers are apt to do. After this every step would bring them nearer home; but still they endeavoured to make the course as interesting as possible. Having taken a turn round the tower, and dropped the scent thickly in their track, off they again set. Along the upper edge of the downs they went at an easy jog-trot, and then when compelled at last, with regret, to leave the breezy hills, they took their way across a succession of fields where oats, and turnips, and mangel wurtzel were wont to grow, till they descended into the richer pasture and wheat-producing lands. Still they had many a stream and deep ditch to leap.

“How do you feel, old fellow?” said Ernest, after they had made good play for a couple of miles or more without stopping.

“As fresh as one of the daisies we are treading on,” answered Buttar. “Do you know, Bracebridge, I never like treading on wild flowers; it seems such wanton destruction of some of the most beautiful works of nature. I feel all the time as a donkey who has got into a flower-bed ought to feel,—that I am a very mischievous animal. I would always rather go out of my way than injure them, especially such graceful gems as the wood anemone, or the wild hyacinth, or the wood sorrel, or primroses and cowslips. I feel that I could not restore one of the hundreds my careless feet have injured, even if my life depended on it.”

“The same sort of idea has crossed my mind, I own,” replied Ernest; “but then I bethought me, that they have been given in such rich profusion that, although hundreds or thousands may fall victims to our careless steps, as you remark, thousands and tens of thousands remain to show the glory of God’s works, and that year after year they come back to us as plentiful and lovely as ever. But I say, old fellow, it won’t do to stop and philosophise. We are hares for the nonce, remember, and the hounds are in hot chase after us. By the by, apropos to the subject, I remember reading a capital Irish story of Lover’s, which made me laugh very much. For some reason or other, a fox walks into the cottage of a keeper, who is absent, and sits down on a chair before the fire, putting his feet on the fender, and taking up a newspaper, resolved to make himself comfortable. ‘A newspaper?’ exclaimed the Irishman to whom the story is being narrated. ‘What did he want with that?’ ‘Faith! how else could he tell where the hounds were going to meet in the morning?’ is the answer.”

Buttar laughed heartily at Ernest’s anecdote.

“Do you know that I cannot help feeling sometimes, as I am running along, as if I were really and truly a two-legged hare,” observed the latter.

“Well, so do I,” replied Buttar. “And when I have been doing a hound, I have so completely fancied myself one, as I have been scrambling through hedges and ditches, that I have felt more inclined to bark than to speak, and should certainly have claimed fellowship with a harrier had I encountered one.”