The Honourable Crasher and Topsy-Turvy had already fallen out, as to a cigar, which the former wanted to light. No! the mare would _not_ stand still, and an impatient jerk at the curb-rein had not tended to adjust this difference. So she was backing and sidling and shaking her head, and making herself intensely disagreeable, whilst the Honourable, who soon recovered his equanimity, scanned a certain stile just in front of her with a critical eye and employed himself by vaguely calculating how many yards before she came to it she was likely, in her present humour, to “take off;” also whereabouts he should land if they _did_ make a mess of it, and whether _more_ than two or three fellows would be on his back at once.
He has by no means solved the problem, when a violent rush is made towards the lane. Somebody has seen somebody else gallop, who has seen a sheep-dog run; this is a sufficient reason for some eighty or ninety horsemen to charge furiously in the same direction; their leaders finding no hounds, then pull up, and the crowd proceed leisurely back again. But this false alarm has been in favour of the fox, who perceiving a clear space before him, and having obtained, by a dexterous turn round the covert, a little law of his pursuers, takes advantage of the lull, to slip away unobserved by any one but the first whip, and that officer is far too discreet to make a noise. He telegraphs mutely to the huntsman, who has _the ladies_ out of covert, and dashing to the front, with three blasts of his horn. Ere the Honourable Crasher has had time to indulge Topsy-Turvy with a fling at the stile, which she jumps as if there was a ten-foot drain on each side, the pack are settled to the scent, and racing away a clear field ahead of every one but the huntsman and whip. The Honourable Crasher, however, is coming up hand-over-hand, Topsy-Turvy laying herself out in rattling form. The master, with a backward glance at the crowd, is alongside of him, and Mr. Sawyer, sailing over the first fence, in such good company, with a tight hold of his horse’s head, and an undeniable start, thinks he is “really in for it at last!”
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