As for the hounds, after my first riding in among them, I tell you, honestly, I never saw so much as the tip of one of their tails; nothing in this world did I see except Trumpeter's dun-coloured mane, and that I gripped firm: riding, by the blessing of luck, safe through the walking, the trotting, the galloping, and never so much as getting a tumble.
There was a chap at Croydon, very well known as the "Spicy Dustman," who, when he could get no horse to ride to the hounds, turned regularly out on his donkey; and on this occasion made one of us. He generally managed to keep up with the dogs, by trotting quietly through the cross roads, and knowing the country well. Well, having a good guess where the hounds would find, and the line that sly Reynolds (as they call the fox) would take, the Spicy Dustman turned his animal down the lane, from Squashtail to Cutshins Common, across which, sure enough, came the whole hunt. There's a small hedge and a remarkably fine ditch here; some of the leading chaps took both, in gallant style; others went round by a gate, and so would I, only I couldn't; for Trumpeter would have the hedge, and be-hanged to him, and went right for it.
Hoop! if ever you _did_ try a leap! Out go your legs, out fling your arms, off goes your hat; and the next thing you feel, that is, _I_ did, is a most tremendous thwack across the chest, and my feet jerked out of the stirrups; me left in the branches of a tree; Trumpeter gone clean from under me, and walloping and floundering in the ditch underneath. One of the stirrup-leathers had caught in a stake, and the horse couldn't get away; and neither of us, I thought, ever _would_ have got away; but, all of sudden, who should come up the lane but the Spicy Dustman!
"Holloa!" says I, "you gent, just let us down from this here tree!"
"Lor!" says he, "I'm blest if I didn't take you for a robin."
"Let's down," says I; but he was all this time employed in disengaging Trumpeter, whom he got out of the ditch, trembling and as quiet as possible. "Let's down," says I. "Presently," says he; and taking off his coat, he begins whistling and swishing down Trumpeter's sides and saddle; and, when he had finished, what do you think the rascal did?—he just quietly mounted on Trumpeter's back, and shouts out, "Git down yourself, old Bears-grease; you've only to drop! _I'll_ give your oss a hairing arter them 'ounds; and you, vy you may ride back my pony to Tuggeridgeweal!" And with this, I'm blest if he didn't ride away, leaving me holding, as for the dear life, and expecting every minute the branch would break.