I in that saddle
I should be better off than when I started. Even Voltigeur could not
compare with this magnificent creature. To think is to act with me. In
one instant I was down the ladder and at the door of the stable. The
next I was out and the bridle was in my hand. I bounded into the saddle.

Somebody, the master or the man, shouted wildly behind me. What cared I
for his shouts! I touched the horse with my spurs and he bounded forward
with such a spring that only a rider like myself could have sat him. I
gave him his head and let him go--it did not matter to me where, so
long as we left this inn far behind us. He thundered away across the
vineyards, and in a very few minutes I had placed miles between myself
and my pursuers. They could no longer tell in that wild country in which
direction I had gone. I knew that I was safe, and so, riding to the
top of a small hill, I drew my pencil and note-book from my pocket and
proceeded to make plans of those camps which I could see and to draw the
outline of the country.

He was a dear creature upon whom I sat, but it was not easy to draw upon
his back, for every now and then his two ears would cock, and he would
start and quiver with impatience. At first I could not understand this
trick of his, but soon I observed that he only did it when a peculiar
noise--"yoy, yoy, yoy"--came from somewhere among the oak woods beneath
us. And then suddenly this strange cry changed into a most terrible
screaming, with the frantic blowing of a horn. Instantly he went
mad--this horse. His eyes blazed. His mane bristled. He bounded from
the earth and bounded again, twisting and turning in a frenzy. My pencil
flew one way and my note-book another. And then, as I looked down into
the valley, an extraordinary sight met my eyes.

The hunt was streaming down it. The fox I could not see, but the dogs
were in full cry, their noses down, their tails up, so close together
that they might have been one great yellow and white moving carpet. And
behind them rode the horsemen--my faith, what a sight! Consider every
type which a great army could show. Some in hunting dress, but the most
in uniforms: blue dragoons, red dragoons, red-trousered hussars, green
riflemen, artillerymen, gold-slashed lancers, and most of all red, red,
red, for the infantry officers ride as hard as the cavalry.

Such a crowd, some well mounted, some ill, but all flying along as best
they might, the subaltern as good as the ge