Frostyface and Lord Scamperdale here for the first time diverged from the
line the hounds were running, and made for the neck of a smooth, flat,
rather inviting-looking piece of ground, instead of crossing it, Sponge,
thinking to get a niche, rode to it; and the 'deeper and deeper still' sort
of flounder his horse made soon let him know that he was in a bog. The
impetuous Hercules rushed and reared onwards as if to clear the wide
expanse; and alighting still lower, shot Sponge right overhead in the
middle.
[Illustration]
'_That's_ cooked _your_ goose!' exclaimed his lordship, eyeing Sponge and
his horse floundering about in the black porridge-like mess.
'Catch my horse!' hallooed Sponge to the first whip, who came galloping up
as Hercules was breasting his way out again.
'Catch him yourself,' grunted the man, galloping on.
A peat-cutter, more humane, received the horse as he emerged from the black
sea, exclaiming, as the now-piebald Sponge came lobbing after on foot, 'A,
sir! but ye should niver set tee to ride through sic a place as that!'
Sponge, having generously rewarded the man with a fourpenny piece, for
catching his horse and scraping the thick of the mud off him, again
mounted, and cantered round the point he should at first have gone; but his
chance was out--the farther he went, the farther he was left behind; till
at last, pulling up, he stood watching the diminishing pack, rolling like
marbles over the top of Rotherjade Hill, followed by his lordship hugging
his horse round the neck as he went, and the huntsman and whips leading and
driving theirs up before them.
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