if you’ll only sit on his back, he’ll carry you through as safe as a church.”  Phineas could not help thinking that the counsels of the master and of the groom were very different.  “My idea is,” continued Lord Chiltern, “that in hunting you should always avoid a crowd.  I don’t think a horse is worth riding that will go in a crowd.  It’s just like yachting,—­you should have plenty of sea-room.  If you’re to pull your horse up at every fence till somebody else is over, I think you’d better come out on a donkey.”  And so they went away to Pickwell Gorse.

There were over two hundred men out, and Phineas began to think that it might not be so easy to get out of the crowd.  A crowd in a fast run no doubt quickly becomes small by degrees and beautifully less; but it is very difficult, especially for a stranger, to free himself from the rush at the first start.  Lord Chiltern’s horse plunged about so violently, as they stood on a little hill-side looking down upon the cover, that he was obliged to take him to a distance, and Phineas followed him.  “If he breaks down wind,” said Lord Chiltern, “we can’t be better than we are here.  If he goes up wind, he must turn before long, and we shall be all right.”  As he spoke an old hound opened true and sharp,—­an old hound whom all the pack believed,—­and in a moment there was no doubt that the fox had been found.  “There are not above eight or nine acres in it,” said Lord Chiltern, “and he can’t hang long.  Did you ever see such an uneasy brute as this in your life?  But I feel certain he’ll go well when he gets away.”

Phineas was too much occupied with his own horse to think much of that on which Lord Chiltern was mounted.  Bonebreaker, the very moment that he heard the old hound’s note, stretched out his head, and put his mouth upon the bit, and began to tremble in every muscle.  “He’s a great deal more anxious for it than you and I are,” said Lord Chiltern.  “I see they’ve given you that gag.  But don’t you ride him on it till he wants it.  Give him lots of room, and he’ll go in the snaffle.”  All which caution made Phineas think that any insurance office would charge very dear on his life at the present moment.

The fox took two rings of the gorse, and then he went,—­up wind.  “It’s not a vixen, I’ll swear,” said Lord Chiltern.  “A vixen in cub never went away like that yet.  Now then, Finn, my boy, keep to the right.”  And Lord Chiltern, with the horse out of Lincolnshire, went away across the brow of the hill, leaving the hounds to the left, and selected, as his point of exit into the next field, a stiff rail, which, had there been an accident, must have put a very wide margin of ground between the rider and his horse.  “Go hard at your fences, and then you’ll fall clear,” he had said to Phineas.  I don’t think, however, that he would have ridden at the rail as he did, but that there was no help for him.  “The brute began in his own way, and carried on after in the same fashion all through,” he said afterwards.  Phineas took the fence a little lower down, and what it was at which he rode he never knew.  Bonebreaker sailed over it, whatever it was, and he soon found himself by his friend’s side.