ter like a thunderbolt, and I found myself playing among the
dogs like the donkey among the chickens. "Back, Mr. Coxe," holloas
the huntsman; and so I pulled very hard, and cried out, "Wo!" but he
wouldn't; and on I went galloping for the dear life. How I kept on is a
wonder; but I squeezed my knees in very tight, and shoved my feet very
hard into the stirrups, and kept stiff hold of the scruff of Trumpeter's
neck, and looked betwixt his ears as well as ever I could, and trusted
to luck: for I was in a mortal fright, sure enough, as many a better man
would be in such a case, let alone a poor hairdresser.

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-colored 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
a 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 did