But the ignorance as well as the brutality of unnecessarily spurring a hunter is even worse than that just portrayed. When a young horse that has never seen a hound, is ridden up, for the first time in his life, _not_ to a meet, at which the whole pack are to be seen, but merely to the side of a covert, which, hidden from view, they are drawing, it might reasonably be conceived that under such circumstances he could not have an idea of their past, present, or future proceedings--we mean, where they had come from, what they were doing, or what they were going to do. However, no sooner does a hound, from laziness, or possibly from feeling that he has been sufficiently pricked by thorns, briars, and gorse, creep out for a few seconds before him, than--"Angels and ministers of grace defend us!"--the young horse pricks up his ears, stares intently at him, holds his breath, and, with a heart beating so hard that it may be not only heard but felt by the rider, he breaks out into a perspiration, which, on the appearance of a few more hounds, turns into foam as white as soap-suds. On an old hound--by a single deep tone, instantaneously certified by the sharp, shrill, resolute voice of the huntsman--announcing to creation that the one little animal which so many bigger ones have been so good as to visit, is "at home," the young horse paws the ground; if restrained, evinces a slight disposition to rear; until, by the time the whole pack--encouraged by the cheery cry, "_Have at him!_"--in full chorus have struck up their band of music, he appears to have become almost ungovernable, and is evidently outrageously anxious to do--he knows not what; and accordingly, when a sudden shriek, scream, or, as the Irish term it, "screech," rather than a holla, from the opposite side of the covert, briefly announces, as by a telegram, the joyous little word "+Away!+" suiting his action to it, "_away_" the young horse often bolts with his rider, just as likely "away" from the hounds as with them. If he follows them, infuriated by ardour, which neither he nor his rider have power to control, he looks at nothing, thinks of nothing, until at full speed coming to say a stiff fence he disdains to rise at, a lesson is offered to him, which, however, he is a great deal too much excited to learn by heart; and so, before his rider has had time enough to uncoil himself from his roll, the "young 'un," without a thought or disposition to wait for the old gentleman, leaves him on the ground to think about the hounds; while with dangling stirrups, reins hanging loose on his neck, and outstretched neck and tail, he is once again "up and at 'em!"