who had been in the carriage with Lord Rufford, and who had hardly spoken a word to any one the whole day.  This was the celebrated Major Caneback, known to all the world as one of the dullest men and best riders across country that England had ever produced.  But he was not so dull but that he knew how to make use of his accomplishment, so as always to be able to get a mount on a friend’s horses.  If a man wanted to make a horse, or to try a horse, or to sell a horse, or to buy a horse, he delighted to put Major Caneback up.  The Major was sympathetic and made his friend’s horses, and tried them, and sold them.  Then he would take his two bottles of wine,—­of course from his friend’s cellar,—­and when asked about the day’s sport would be oracular in two words, “Rather slow,” “Quick spurt,” “Goodish thing,” “Regularly mulled,” and such like.  Nevertheless it was a great thing to have Major Caneback with you.  To the list of those who rode well and quietly must in justice be added our friend Larry Twentyman, who was in truth a good horseman.  And he had three things to do which it was difficult enough to combine.  He had a young horse which he would have liked to sell; he had to coach Kate Masters on his pony; and he desired to ride like Major Caneback.

From Impington Park they went in a straight line to Littleton Gorse skirting certain small woods which the fox disdained to enter.  Here the pace was very good, and the country was all grass.  It was the very cream of the U.R.U; and could the Senator have read the feelings of the dozen leading men in the run, he would have owned that they were for the time satisfied with their amusement.  Could he have read Kate Master’s feelings he would have had to own that she was in an earthly Paradise.  When the pony paused at the big brook, brought his four legs steadily down on the brink as though he were going to bathe, then with a bend of his back leaped to the other side, dropping his hind legs in and instantly recovering them, and when she saw that Larry had waited just a moment for her, watching to see what might be her fate, she was in heaven.  “Wasn’t it a big one, Larry?” she asked in her triumph.  “He did go in behind!” “Those cats of things always do it somehow,” Larry replied darting forward again and keeping the Major well in his eye.  The brook had stopped one or two, and tidings came up that Ned Botsey had broken his horse’s back.  The knowledge of the brook had sent some round by the road,—­steady riding men such as Mr. Runciman and Doctor Nupper.  Captain Glomax had got into it and came up afterwards wet through, with temper by no means improved.  But the glory of the day had been the way in which Lord Rufford’s young bay mare, who had never seen a brook before, had flown over it with the Major on her back, taking it, as Larry afterwards described, “just in her stride, without condescending to look at it.  I was just behind the Major, and saw her do it” Larry understood that a man should never talk of his own place in a run, but he didn’t quite understand that neither should he talk of having been close to another man who was supposed to have had the best of it.  Lord Rufford, who didn’t talk much of these things, quite understood that he had received full value for his billet and mount in the improved character of his mare.