TheCompleteMemoirsOfGeorgeSherston

shiny weather for a final half-day with the hounds.
The meet was twelve miles off and I'd got to catch
the 4.30 train to Dublin, so I had to keep a sharp
eye on my watch. The Mister was mournful about
my departure, and anathematized the Egyptians
wholeheartedly, for he couldn't get rid of his notion
that it was they who were requiring my services as a
soldier. I felt a bit mournful myself as my eyes took
in the country with its distant villages an<^ gleams of
water, its green fields and white cottages, and the
hazy transparent hills on the horizon—sometimes
silver-grey and sometimes that deep azure which Pd
seen nowhere but in Ireland.

We had a scrambling hunt over a rough country,
and I had all the fun I could find, but every stone
wall I jumped felt like good-bye for ever to "this
happy breed of men, this little world", in other words
the Limerick Hunt, which had restored my faith in
my capacity to be heedlessly happy. How kind they
were, those friendly fox-hunters, and how I hated
leaving them.

At half-past two The Mister and I began to look
for Clancy's car, which contained his groom and was
to take us home. But the car was on the wrong side
of a big covert, and while we were following it, it was
following us. Much flustered, we at last succeeded in
encountering it, and Clancy drove us back to Mrs.
O'DonnelPs in a wild enthusiastic spurt.

Mrs. O'Donnell had a woodcock ready for my tea,
and I consumed it in record time. Then there was a
mad rush to the station, where my baggage was
awaiting me, plus a group of Fusilier friends. The
Assistant-Adjutant was at his post, assuring the engine
driver that he must on no account start without me,
mail-train or no mail-train. With thirty seconds to

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